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Oh Canada: We Will Neither Cower Nor Bend
More insane idiocy from the petty huckster clown king whose idea of governance is threatening lawsuits, trade wars, buildings that won't put his name on them; bungling war and peace; flaunting Nazi loyalty queries and sadistic images of black men in chains; and distracting from it all with the dumbass geographic circlejerk of 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 blew 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. (Here he is on trade: The stupid, it burns.)
"All it takes is a good pen and some intelligence,” he said, only batting one for two in a pretend-name-changing 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.
Update: Talk about "Do not obey in advance": After defying the petty madness, usage of Mapquest has surged to about 50 times its usual rate, leapfrogging past Google and Apple Maps to become the most-downloaded mapping app, and the fourth most popular of all apps excluding games in the US. Along with their "spread some geographic joy" invite, they posted a mocking, all-caps retort: "OUR MAPS ARE BIG AND BEAUTIFUL. PEOPLE COME UP TO US AND SAY WE'LL GET THEM PLACES. AND WE DO!!" Lol.
Canada vs. the Epstein Statesof AmericaImage from Bluesky
Aug 31, 2026
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As Ocean Temperatures Rise, Coral Reefs Face Closing Window for Recovery From Climate Damage
The destruction of coral reef cover, cataloged in the largest global assessment of the reefs ever completed, was distressing to scientists, with the world's reefs declining by nearly 10% between 2020-24, compared with 1980-2009.
The authors of the report released Monday by Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN), however, emphasized that coral bleaching events driven by ocean heating was not the most worrisome finding of the analysis—but rather, the fact oceans have become so warm that stressed reefs have less and less time to recover.
Historically, coral bleaching events—in which changes in conditions such as ocean temperatures and pollution cause coral to expel its symbiotic algae and become completely white and more vulnerable to mortality—have taken place about once in a decade, giving the reefs years to recover.
Now, the reefs are “lucky to get five or six years,” as water temperatures are remaining high and making it more difficult to regain hard coral cover, explained Manuel González Rivero of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, the lead author of the report, titled “Status of Coral Reefs of the World: 2025.”
“After decades of studying coral reefs, what concerns me most isn’t the current loss of hard coral cover; it’s that we’re steadily eroding the conditions they need to recover,” said González Rivero. “Climate change is driving more frequent and severe marine heatwaves, but local pressures such as poor water quality, overfishing, and coastal development are making reefs even less able to withstand them."
The study compiled 21.1 million observations from 36,886 reef sites across 124 countries and territories, drawing on more than 40 years of data from across the globe.
But scientists cautioned that because the research did not include the most recent and intense global bleaching event, which lasted from 2023-25, it may not provide a full picture of the danger coral reefs are in—as well as the coastal communities they help protect and the thousands of marine species they serve as a habitat for.
Carlos Duarte, a marine scientist at the Coral Research and Development Accelerator Platform, told The New York Times that this year's El Niño warming trend is likely to cause another global bleaching event next year, which reefs will likely struggle to recover from as ocean temperatures have been recorded as getting hotter and hotter in recent years.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has projected that the Earth will lose 70-90% of its coral reef cover if the planet gets 1.5°C hotter than its preindustrial level.
"For many reefs affected by the unprecedented marine heatwaves in 2024, this year’s El Niño likely means they’ll have had little more than a year to begin recovering before being hit again," said González Rivero. "This is creating a staircase of decline that becomes harder to reverse with every bleaching event.“
The report emphasizes that reefs have maintained their ability to regain hard coral cover "when disturbances are reduced and sufficient recovery time is available," such as after the third major global coral bleaching event since 1998, which took place from 2016-17 and saw a 6.6% decline in coral.
After the event, scientists observed a "relative increase of approximately 6% between 2017 and 2019," said the GCRMN.
"That recovery matters because the benefits coral reefs provide extend far beyond the reef itself. Coral reefs cover less than 0.2% of the ocean floor," said the organization. "Yet, they support at least 25% of all marine species and underpin food security, livelihoods, coastal protection, tourism, and cultural heritage of close to one billion people worldwide."
Scientists including Terry Hughes, a former director of coral reef studies at James Cook University in Australia, who was not involved in the analysis, emphasized that reducing planet-heating emissions is the top solution to the crisis of coral reef recovery, as the pollution from fossil fuel extraction is linked to increasingly hot oceans.
Allowing coral reefs to recover from bleaching events "really depends on how much more greenhouse gases go into the atmosphere and the amount of warming that causes," Hughes told the Times, while local solutions including reducing water pollution are also crucial for maintaining reef health.
David Obura, chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, expressed hope that the report will "shake us out of our persistent inertia."
The long-term monitoring by GCRMN, said Obura, "tracks not just the pulse of coral reefs, but of our planet too. It shows which regions are under the greatest pressure, that actions to date have not been sufficient, and warns where reefs will be under increasing threat in years to come."
"We must act now to halt this decline and invest in solutions that reduce pressures and build resilience, while sustaining the monitoring that turns good intentions into effective policy," he said. "The 40 years of data in this report provide a strident warning that delayed action risks locking in irreversible losses—not just to reefs, but also to the economies and people that depend on them.”
Aug 31, 2026
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'America Is For Sale': Trump Reportedly Trying to Hand Private Developer Part of Yosemite
Even while repeatedly serving the interests of destructive industries, President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum have claimed they are committed to protecting US national parks—but the Republican administration is now working to give a private developer a piece of Yosemite, NOTUS reported on Friday.
Specifically, according to unnamed sources and government documents, federal staffers are working on a potential land exchange to give a quarter-mile strip of land in California's Yosemite National Park "to a company that, through a web of limited liability companies, is operated by real-estate developer and investment firm Kingsbarn Realty Capital."
The developers own 83 acres west of the park, and Kingsbarn CEO Jeff Pori—whose company did not respond to a request for comment—aims "to build a short road connecting the property to one of Yosemite's central thoroughfares," providing "the land exceptionally rare private access to a park that is otherwise almost entirely buffered by national forests," NOTUS detailed.
The sources told NOTUS that political leaders at the US Department of the Interior "want us to be responsive to the property owner and their lobbyists or people, and they want us to work with these folks," and that "the political pressure being brought to bear is very unusual."
The National Park Service, which is part of the department, said that "no final decisions have been made," but any proposals "would be subject to all applicable federal laws, regulations, and departmental policies, including required environmental review and public notification processes."
The revelation—which came during National Park Week—was met with outrage.
Ripping the possible "secretive, backroom deal," as "an attack on the American people that own this national park," Mark Rose, the National Parks Conservation Association's Sierra Nevada program manager, told NOTUS that "it would also be unlawful, and a court previously rejected a road development proposal."
We are opposed to private developers building driveways and special access into our parks. The ultra wealthy can wait in line and go through the gate just like everyone else. www.notus.org/agencies/tru...
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— AltYellostoneNatPar (@altyellonatpark.org) August 28, 2026 at 9:00 AM
Sierra Club executive director Loren Blackford said in a statement that "Yosemite is not Donald Trump's to give away. This secretive deal betrays the purpose of our national parks and the promise our government has kept since Abraham Lincoln to protect Yosemite for the public and for generations to come."
"For more than 150 years, each generation has carried forward the responsibility to protect this sacred landscape and pass it on intact," Blackford continued. "The Trump administration is betraying that legacy by trying to hand parts of Yosemite to a private developer. We will use every tool at our disposal to stop this corrupt giveaway."
While the looming land swap could move forward without any sign-off from Congress, House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) was among those who spoke out on social media Friday.
"Our parks belong to all of us," the congressman emphasized. "These places should be protected for every generation, not sold off to Trump's ultrawealthy friends to profit off of. I will fight this, both for Yosemite and for every treasured park that would be up for grabs if this domino falls."
Columnist and self-described "recovering attorney" Wajahat Ali declared, "America is for sale," and American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick said, "Government of the people, by the people, but for friends and donors of the president above everyone else."
While other critics condemned the reported efforts as "disgusting," "sickening," and "shocking," journalist Chris D'Angelo commented, "I would say this is shocking, but things have been headed in this direction since Trump reentered office."
After Trump won a second term in 2024—having secured campaign funds from Big Oil, and run on a promise to "drill, baby, drill"— one of his early actions post-inauguration was declaring a "national energy emergency" intended to boost the climate-wrecking fossil fuel industry.
Since then, while cashing in on his second presidency—including via stock transactions made this year as fuel prices soared due to his illegal war with Iran—Trump has continued to push policies that help polluters and other rich allies. For example, last week the administration delivered a "one-two punch" to national forests, taking aim at a pair of rules intended to protect such lands.
The Center for Biological Diversity warned this week that the Trump administration's proposed repeal of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule would "open pristine public lands to road construction, commercial logging, and industrial development," and, according to the group's analysis, put 400 species on an "extinction fast track."
"More roads mean more sediment in streams, more fragmentation of wildlife habitat, more human access to places wildlife depend on for refuge, and more wildfires in forests already facing unprecedented climate change-fueled risk," the center stressed. "The roadless rule has held that line for a generation. Without it the losses to wildlife, water, and the wild places that define the American landscape will be irreversible."
This article has been updated with comment from the Sierra Club.
Aug 28, 2026
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'Testament to the Power of the Progressive Movement': Ed Markey Beats Seth Moulton in Landslide
Progressive US Sen. Ed Markey, a champion of Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, decisively fended off a Democratic primary challenge from his right on Tuesday, defeating Rep. Seth Moulton by nearly 30 percentage points in a contest that focused heavily on the incumbent senator's age.
Markey, 80, and his supporters—including prominent young Democrats such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)—rejected the notion that "generational change" necessarily means electing the youngest candidate in the race. Markey said in his victory speech Tuesday night that "generational change isn’t about compromising to do the small things better—it’s about fighting to do the big things best."
“Tonight is a testament to the power of the progressive movement,” Markey added. “It is a progressive movement fueled by young people, demanding more from their leaders, and it’s your voices that are the ones we need to hear right now.”
Moulton, a 47-year-old member of the conservative New Democrat Coalition, attempted to capture momentum that has propelled other younger candidates to victory over entrenched incumbents by making Markey's age and lengthy tenure in Congress—rather than his policy agenda—a central focus of Tuesday's contest. In a recent interview with MS NOW, Moulton removed ideology and policy from the equation completely, lumping Markey in with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) as well as elderly Democrats such as former President Joe Biden.
The Democratic representative, who opposes Medicare for All and attacked Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) from the right during his ill-fated 2020 presidential bid, also falsely claimed in a campaign ad that he and Markey "want the same things."
Moulton's age-centric message failed, according to Markey's backers, because voters in Massachusetts and elsewhere are hungry for progressive politics, not just younger politicians.
"We don’t want younger politicians with older politics,” Tyler Hack, the 21-year-old executive director of the Christopher Street Project, a trans rights group, said at a rally for Markey over the weekend.
Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, said in a statement that "tonight's victory isn't just a win for Ed Markey or for our progressive movement. It's a rejection of the idea that generational change has to come at the expense of bold, progressive leadership."
"Massachusetts voters understood the difference between changing the age of our leaders and changing the politics of our country," said Geevarghese. "Ed Markey has never settled for the moderate Democratic establishment or accepted the status quo simply because Washington said change was impossible. From staking his political capital on the Green New Deal, to fighting for Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, and taking on corporations and billionaires rigging our economy, Ed has consistently been willing to go where the Democratic Party needs to go—often before the rest of Washington gets there."
"That's the lesson from Massachusetts tonight," he added. "The future doesn't belong to the youngest politician in the room. It belongs to the people with the courage to fight for it."
Markey, who is heavily favored to win the general election in November, has said a new six-year Senate term would be his last.
Sep 02, 2026
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100+ Civil Society Groups Condemn Trump Attack on Democratic Establishment Think Tank
A diverse coalition of around 150 organizations on Tuesday collectively spoke out against US President Donald Trump's recent attack on the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank with ties to the Democratic Party establishment.
The Republican president, through one of his lawyers, threatened to sue the center last month over its July report concluding that there was no evidence his deployment of the National Guard in Washington, DC did anything to reduce violent crime.
"Since our nation's founding, the rights to free speech, association, and the press have been the bedrock on which American democracy has thrived," begins the coalition's statement, spearheaded by Nonprofits Together. "We reaffirm, as has each generation before us, our unqualified commitment to the First Amendment and its foundational protections."
"In so doing, we stand in strong solidarity with the Center for American Progress (CAP), a nonpartisan think tank, and its right to publish expert analysis on the impact of the Trump administration's—or any administration's—policies," it continues. "The free exchange of ideas—including ideas that are inconvenient to those in power—is critical for Americans to understand the nature and impact of the actions of their government."
Trump's legal attack on CAP is just "the latest salvo in the administration's ongoing efforts to suppress the speech of organizations that challenge their policies, defend the rule of law, and protect civil rights and vulnerable communities," the coalition noted.
Other authoritarian attacks—as detailed last December in the Free Press report "Chokehold: Donald Trump's War on Free Speech & the Need for Systemic Resistance"—include the White House taking control of the presidential press pool, legal action such as Trump's lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch and the The Wall Street Journal over reporting on the president's ties to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and the administration working to deport foreign scholars and journalists who criticize US policy.
First it was law firms, then universities, and now Trump has threatened a research organization in an attempt to silence them.We're proud to join 150+ organizations standing up for @americanprogress.bsky.social and the First Amendment. Read the full statement: nptogether.org/press/cap-st...
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— American Oversight (@weareoversight.bsky.social) September 1, 2026 at 12:14 PM
Stressing that there are often disagreements "even within think tanks," the coalition warned Tuesday that attempting to silence sources of information "degrades our free exchange of ideas, and risks leaving only distortions in the public square."
"This is infinitely more damaging to our democratic ideals when done for purely political purposes," the groups argued. "There are few issues more fundamental to the First Amendment than the right of an independent organization to publish evidence-based analysis of a government policy and how it is or is not working."
"This is not about ideology or partisanship," the organizations continued. "This is true regardless of who is in power, and who is issuing public critiques of that power. We stand with the Center for American Progress, not in agreement with every view they hold, but in steadfast support for their rights to voice those views freely and without political retribution."
The signatories range from environmental, labor, and legal groups to those focused on faith, housing, immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive freedom, and more. They include the ACLU, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Drug Policy Alliance, Economic Policy Institute, Giffords, Greenpeace USA, Human Rights Campaign, Indivisible, National Education Association, Oxfam America, Public Citizen, and Union of Concerned Scientists.
“The free exchange of ideas—including ideas that are inconvenient to those in power—is critical for Americans to understand the nature and impact of the actions of their government.” CAC stands with @americanprogress.bsky.social: nptogether.org/press/cap-st...
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— CAC (@myconstitution.bsky.social) September 1, 2026 at 11:30 AM
CAP was founded in 2003 by John Podesta, who has served in various roles under former Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. The center's current president, Neera Tanden, has also worked for key party leaders. In response to Trump's threat last month, she emphasized that the think tank "is an independent, nonpartisan research organization, and our work is grounded in rigorous, evidence-based research and analysis."
Blasting the threatened lawsuit as "baseless" and "a transparent attempt to silence us," Tanden pledged that "we will neither cower nor bend in the face of it."
"In America, profound disagreements over public policy are resolved through robust public debate, not through threats or intimidation," she added. "Independent data, evidence, and analysis are essential to that debate. Efforts to silence independent research because its findings are unwelcome by an administration or president should alarm every American."
Sep 01, 2026
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JD Vance Says If His Work With Trump 'Leads to the End Times' That Is 'OK'
Shortly before US President Donald Trump on Tuesday spurred fresh fears that he'll use nuclear weapons in his illegal war on Iran, Vice President JD Vance told a Christian podcaster that he's fine with the administration's work leading to the end times.
"Do I think that we're in the end times? I don't know," Vance told 22-year-old podcaster Bryce Crawford nearly an hour into a lengthy video interview released Monday. While admitting his fascination with the theories, the VP said that "I think that it's probably bad for me, spiritually, to focus too much on it."
As The New Republic's Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling explained: "The Christian end times refer to the religion's interpretations of the final days of humanity. That's detailed in the Bible as a period involving widespread turmoil and deception (such as wars, earthquakes, and a false prophet), a seven-year stretch of unprecedented hardship known as the Great Tribulation that will end in Armageddon, the emergence of the Antichrist and a cadre of their followers who reject Christ's teachings, and a final judgment by God."
As Vance sat beside a propped-up edition of his new book on his religious journey, including his conversion to Catholicism, he said that "I think that there are... things about the world that make me feel like not shocked if the Antichrist was walking among us, but again, I try not to focus too much on it."
"One of the things that I think that Catholics are very focused on, that I think is very good for me, is this idea that... we don't know when God is coming, but we're commanded to try to, as much as possible, try to make the world the kind of world that God wants it to be," the vice president continued.
"While I wouldn't be shocked if we are living in the end times," he added, "what I'm trying to focus on is doing as much of God's work as possible right now, and if that leads to the end times, OK, and if that leads to, you know, us building a better world that thrives and survives for a very long time after I'm gone, that's great, too."
Those remarks—from a man expected to compete with figures such as Donald Trump Jr. and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for the GOP's 2028 presidential nomination, if the president doesn't try for an unconstitutional third term—were met with alarm.
Critics wrote that "this should concern us all" and wondered: "WTF does that mean? Is he OK with using nuclear weapons?"
Sharing a clip of Vance's comments on social media, Iranian-American writer Alex Shams noted that "these guys are trying to convince you Iran is ruled by a crazed messianic theocracy."
Podcaster and writer Katie Halper said, "Show this clip to anyone who says Iran is run by religious lunatics."
As Vance's video interview began circulating on Monday, over six months into the Iran War, a reporter in the Oval Office asked Trump if he's ruled out using a nuclear weapon against the Mideast country.
While suggesting he has ruled out nuclear war, Trump also said: "What a stupid question that is, actually. Here they are, they're totally defeated militarily, so now I defeat them, and now I should use a nuclear weapon on top of them?"
Just a day later, Trump triggered speculation that he'll pursue a nuclear attack. On Tuesday, while bombing alleged Iranian military targets, he wrote on his Truth Social platform, "If the failed Nation of Iran retaliates for this very justified attack, they will be hit again at a much harder and higher level, but it will not be the biggest attack of them all, that is waiting in the wings and, when it is over, there will be very little left of the Islamic Republic of Iran!"
Sep 01, 2026
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'What a Disgrace': Trump Treasury Dept. Refuses to Close Billionaire's Private Jet Loophole
"While working families struggle to afford groceries, housing, and gas," said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, the Trump administration "focuses on tax breaks for billionaires—including tax breaks for private jets."
Sep 03, 2026
A group of Democratic Caucus members in the US Senate on Thursday denounced the US Treasury Department under President Donald Trump over its refusal to close a gaping loophole in the federal tax code that allows some of the wealthiest people in the country to reap tax benefits from their ownership and use of private jets—even as working people and the middle class families struggle to make ends meet in Trump's economy.
In response to a previous request made in July by Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to close a rule that allows the wealthy "to substantially undervalue the taxable cost of personal travel on a corporate private jet," a letter from a top Treasury official on Thursday said such an effort would be too "burdensome," including for the uber-rich taxpayers subject to it.
Known as the Standard Industry Fare Level (SIFL) loophole, the lawmakers have argued that it has been exploited by the extremely wealthy to lower their tax burden even as they travel the country—and the world—in the least energy efficient and most polluting way possible.
"President Trump’s 2017 tax law and Big, Beautiful-for-Billionaires bill handed billionaires and big corporations massive tax breaks on private jets," said Sen. Whitehouse in a statement. "The Trump administration now says it would be ‘burdensome’ to close the private jet tax loophole because this is an administration hell-bent on using the powers of government to make the ultra-rich even richer, and they don’t care if middle-class taxpayers get stuck with the tab."'
Alongside their July letter, the lawmakers shared analyses detailing the loss of the revenue made possible by the SIFL loophole. According to the Whitehouse's office,
analyses by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation detailing the boom in private jet sales after passage of Republicans’ tax cut for corporate jets and highlighting the extent of the tax revenue lost by the abuse of the SIFL loophole. One analysis responds to an inquiry from the senators on the tax consequences of the SIFL loophole, finding that a wealthy executive would pay roughly between $1,577 and $1,804 less in taxes for a flight from JFK airport in New York City to DCA airport in Washington, D.C. under the SIFL method. The fair market value of that flight could range from $4,500 to $5,112, but under SIFL, that executive would only have to report a value of $235.77.
Van Hollen on Thursday denounced the shamefulness of yet another Trump administration position that rewards the wealthy and powerful at the expense of working people.
"Trump’s priorities revolve around enriching himself and his billionaire friends. While working families struggle to afford groceries, housing, and gas, this Administration focuses on tax breaks for billionaires—including tax breaks for private jets," said Van Hollen.
"What a disgrace,” he added.
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Amnesty Warns Israel Is 'Brazenly Expanding Its Annexation Agenda' in Occupied West Bank
"Any states providing assistance to Israel’s expansion of illegal settlements or other war crimes risk complicity in international crimes against Palestinians."
Sep 03, 2026
Amnesty International said Thursday that the far-right Israeli government's recent flurry of land confiscation orders in the illegally occupied West Bank "deepens Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise and further undermines the rights of Palestinians," who are facing an increasingly destructive and deadly wave of settler violence.
The new Amnesty report noted that in July alone, the Israeli military signed "at least 15 land confiscation orders covering approximately 200 dunams (20 hectares) of land in Areas A and C in the Jenin governorate in the north of the occupied West Bank, with the apparent goal of connecting two planned Israeli settlements in the area: Emek Dotan and Noa." Those two settlements are among the more than 30 approved this year by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"These latest confiscation orders from Area A show how Israel is now brazenly expanding its annexation agenda to areas that have been under the control of the Palestinian authorities since the Oslo Accords," said Heba Morayef, Amnesty's region director for the Middle East and North Africa. "States with close trade and political relationships with the Israeli government must urgently take action to pressure Israel to rescind these land confiscation orders. Any states providing assistance to Israel’s expansion of illegal settlements or other war crimes risk complicity in international crimes against Palestinians."
"Alongside Israel’s forcible transfer and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Area C," Morayef added, "these measures illustrate in action the Israeli authorities’ determination to intensify its formal annexation of Palestinian land across the occupied West Bank.”
Amnesty's analysis came amid another wave of settler violence in the West Bank over the past 24 hours. The BBC reported early Thursday that "funerals have taken place for two Palestinian teenagers who local officials say were killed by Israeli settlers and soldiers in an attack on their village in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday."
"The village council in al-Mughayyir told the BBC that Omar al-Nassan, 19, and Khalil Abu Alia, 16, were killed as they tried to stop Israeli settlers stealing sheep and that confrontations broke out," the outlet noted. "The Israeli military stated that its forces had entered the village to provide security for an Israeli civilian and police trying to retrieve livestock. It said they fired on and struck what it called 'key instigators' of a 'violent disturbance,' in which Palestinians threw stones at its troops."
The United Nations has tallied an average of nearly seven settler attacks per day in the West Bank this year, the highest number on record.
Amid the settler rampages as well as the ongoing genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip, the Israeli government has advanced "its controversial E1 settlement plan in violation of international law with an announcement that it has opened tenders for the construction of 1,234 Israeli homes in the occupied West Bank," Amnesty noted on Thursday.
"If implemented, the plan would isolate East Jerusalem from the rest of Palestinian territory and will effectively divide the West Bank in two, making Palestinian movement across these areas of the occupied Palestinian territory more difficult and further fragmenting Palestinian communities," the group said.
Last last month, the European Union's diplomatic service called on the Israeli government to "withdraw the tender, halt its E1 plans as well as all other settlement expansion projects, and ensure accountability for settler violence."
But Morayef said Thursday that the international community must do much more than issue statements condemning the Israeli government's actions.
"States with close trade and political relationships with the Israeli government must urgently take action to pressure Israel to rescind these land confiscation orders," said Morayef. "Any states providing assistance to Israel’s expansion of illegal settlements or other war crimes risk complicity in international crimes against Palestinians."
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ICE Hired Unqualified Goons After 'Unprecedented Lowering of Standards': Whistleblower
Immigration and Customs Enforcement "chose... to be more convenient rather than thorough," even though "there was a potential to put lives at risk," said the whistleblower.
Sep 03, 2026
A whistleblower is claiming that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has dangerously lowered its hiring standards for new recruits, who were given final job offers without undergoing even preliminary vetting.
The New York Times reported on Thursday that the whistleblower, who has worked at ICE for 17 years, filed a complaint in August 2025 with the Office of Inspector General in the Department of Homeland Security that sounded alarms about what he described as an "unprecedented lowering of standards" for hiring.
According to the complaint, applicants were offered jobs before they they even passed fingerprint and identity checks, which the whistleblower said created "grave national security risks" for the agency.
In an interview with the Times, the whistleblower said that ICE "chose... to be more convenient rather than thorough," even though "there was a potential to put lives at risk and jeopardize national security."
This is at least the second whistleblower complaint to raise concerns about the deterioration of standards at ICE.
In February, former ICE lawyer Ryan Schwank alleged in a complaint that he "received secretive orders to teach new cadets to violate the Constitution by entering homes without a judicial warrant."
Schwank also alleged that "the legally required training program at the ICE academy is deficient, defective, and broken," which he warned "can and will get people killed."
ICE's hiring standards came under scrutiny this summer after it was revealed that ICE agent David Brouillette, who fatally shot a 25-year-old Colombian immigrant named Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, had a lengthy history of allegedly abusive behavior.
As noted by the Times, Brouillette was even rejected for a job at the police department in Hallowell, Maine because he had "too many red flags."
The ICE hiring surge came shortly after passage of the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which allocated more than $170 billion in funding for immigration enforcement operations. ICE last year said it would use some of the money to hire 10,000 additional agents, more than double the number of agents who had previously worked at the department.
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Honor Life of Gloria Steinem (1934-2026) 'By Organizing' for Rights, Equality, and Freedom
"Thank you, Gloria, for showing the world what it means to speak up for women’s equality."
Sep 03, 2026
Progressive advocates, lawmakers, veteran journalists, labor leaders, and champions of feminism on Thursday are mourning the death of trailblazing women's rights activist and author Gloria Steinem, who has passed away at the age of 92.
Steinem, regarded as an icon of the second-wave feminism that emerged in the 1960s and 70s and co-founder of Ms. Magazine, was known for decades as a leading voice on reproductive rights, women's equality at work, and gender equity across society.
According to her representatives, Steinem died Wednesday at her home in New York City, surrounded by loved ones. An exact cause of death was not given.
"It is a moment of remembrance and celebration of this extraordinary woman. And it is too a moment of reflection." —Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International
"Gloria’s near-century on earth was years well-lived, and she continued working for equality until the very end," read a message posted to her Instagram account.
"Gloria’s greatest gift was her ability to listen to others, to make others feel seen and heard,” the message continued. “Her words, actions, and example gave people permission to be their truest selves. Gloria lived true to her independent spirit, always with curiosity and a great sense of humor.”
"Oh no," declared Agnes Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, upon learning of Steinem's passing.
"It is a moment of remembrance and celebration of this extraordinary woman. And it is too a moment of reflection," Callamard said. "The fight for gender justice and women’s equality is at a critical juncture. The advancements of the last decades are attacked, threatened, mocked. We resist, fight back, build anew."
The progressive advocacy group Our Revolution said that Gloria Steinem "understood that liberation is not something handed down from the powerful. It is something ordinary people organize and fight for."
For more than 50 years, the group added, "she fought for women to have power over our bodies, our work, our lives and our futures. And she understood that the struggle for women’s liberation could never be separated from the struggles for racial justice, economic justice and human dignity. At a moment when women’s rights and fundamental freedoms are once again under attack, the best way we can honor Gloria is not simply by remembering her. It is by organizing. Rest in power, Gloria Steinem."
According to the New York Times:
Steinem helped usher in sweeping cultural transformations across virtually every facet of American life, from the boardroom to the courtroom to the bedroom.
For more than half a century, she personified the women’s movement and became its most enduring symbol; her tinted aviator glasses and curtain of streaked-blond hair parted in the center made her one of the most recognizable women in the world.
A prolific writer, Steinem started her career as a journalist in the 60s and in 1972 she co-founded Ms. Magazine, a publication focused on women's issues with the idea of translating "a movement into a magazine."
Steinem, wrote CNN's chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour, "will go down in history as one of the most important activists of all time, leading a movement for the equality of half the world: its women."
"She lived a long and passionate life dedicated to this vital and basic cause," Amanpour continued. "She did it with intellectual precision, emotional awareness, humor and beauty. May she rest in peace and may the cause thrive."
In a video posted to social media, Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) said that Steinem "always understood that gender equality was absolutely bound up with economic equality and racial justice and that has to continue to be our North Star."
Rest in power, Gloria Steinem. pic.twitter.com/z6f7MMNOVq
— Rep. Becca Balint (@RepBeccaB) September 3, 2026
In 2017, after the first election of President Donald Trump, Steinem was one of the key leaders behind the Women's March, which kicked off opposition to the far-right Republican, with marches in cities nationwide that helped galvanize resistance to the destructive policies to come.
At the time, Steinem warned that Trump's arrival in the White House represented "disaster and a danger," but added that the upside of his ascendancy could be the force brought together to galvanize against him.
“He’s made us see that everything is connected,” she said. “I’m a hope-aholic, nonetheless. I feel we’re beginning to approach the end of one structure and the beginning of another. It’s a time of both danger and possibilities.”
As the Associated Press reports:
On Jan. 21, 2017, when hundreds of thousands of women gathered in Washington in their pink “pussy hats” for the historic Women’s March, it surprised nobody that the keynote speaker, and the most rousing, was Steinem.
“We are linked,” she told the crowd. “And this is a day that will change us forever because we are together.”
For many women, Steinem was the galvanizing voice that day. She would go on to advocate fiercely. But, though many saw her as a singular figure in history, she often liked to say that if she hadn’t come along, someone else would have accomplished the same things.
By the same token, she said, it was less important that younger people listen to her, and more important that they listen to themselves.
“The primary thing is not that they know who I am,” she said, “but that they know who THEY are.”
As news of Steinem's passing spread on Thursday, others offered their reflections on her life and accomplishments.
"Thank you, Gloria, for showing the world what it means to speak up for women’s equality," said the National Organization for Women (NOW) in a statement. "Thank you for fighting for our rights so that every woman and every person can live with dignity, freedom, and equality."
Democratic New York State Rep. Jessica Ramos said Steinem "spent her life refusing to accept a world where women were expected to settle for less."
"She organized, challenged power, and helped turn women’s equality into a movement that changed America," Ramos said. "We honor her legacy by refusing to go backward."
"Gloria Steinem did not simply advocate for women; she changed what women believed was possible," said Victoria Mancinelli, a member of the labor movement in Canada, in response to news of Steinem's death.
"She confronted a world that expected women to remain quiet, accept less, and wait patiently for progress. Gloria refused. Through her journalism, activism, and unrelenting pursuit of equality, she helped transform deeply personal struggles into a powerful collective movement and forced institutions to recognize women as leaders, decision-makers, and agents of change."
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Hegseth Quietly Extends Middle East Troop Deployments Into 2027 as Iran War Drags On
Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth previously echoed President Donald Trump's claim that the Iran war, launched in late February, would be over quickly.
Sep 03, 2026
The Pentagon has reportedly extended Middle East deployments of American troops, fighter squadrons, and warships into next year as the deadly, expensive, and deeply unpopular Iran war drags on with no end in sight.
The Wall Street Journal reported late Wednesday that Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth—who, like President Donald Trump, insisted the Iran assault would be over swiftly—has decided that the US military will maintain a "presence of 50,000 troops in the region in part to give the president flexibility on next steps." The Pentagon "could also keep elements of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division in the Middle East well into 2027," the Journal added, citing a letter that military leaders sent to families.
The Journal also reported that Trump, who has falsely called Iran a "dead" country, is "having discussions with senior aides about whether to declare the Iran war over," even as the bombings continue, American troops remain in the region, and the administration ratchets up economic sanctions.
" Trump administration seems to excel at bombing schools and weddings," Brian Finucane, senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group, wrote on Wednesday. "Winning the illegal and unnecessary war with Iran—not so much."
Hegseth has reportedly backed a plan that would involve "periodic" bombings of Iran in an attempt to keep ship traffic flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, a strategy that analysts say would lead to a "permanent state of war."
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, argued earlier this week that Trump appeared to be leaning toward "maintaining a low-level conflict until the midterms—neither securing a diplomatic deal nor allowing the situation to deteriorate into full-scale war."
"Iranian officials say, both publicly and privately, that they expect the U.S. and Israel to resume the war after the midterms regardless of the impact of the D-Day sanctions," Parsi wrote. "Regional diplomats have largely reached the same conclusion. If sanctions weaken Iran over time while the global economy recovers and adjusts to the new reality in the Strait, a prolonged pause will work against Tehran. Iran may therefore decide to escalate dramatically, taking full advantage of Trump’s perceived vulnerability in the run-up to the elections."
Thousands of Iranians—including hundreds of children—and at least 18 US servicemembers have been killed during the war so far, and the conflict has cost the average American household $1,200 in extra costs as gas prices remain at record levels. Trump has said he doesn't "think about Americans’ financial situation" when he makes decisions pertaining to the Iran war.
The war is fueling the Trump administration's push for a record $1.5 trillion in military spending for the coming fiscal year—a budget demand that has intensified concerns of a "forever war" against Iran.
" Washington is betting that sustained military and economic pressure will eventually force Tehran to retreat," the National Iranian American Council wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. "Iran appears to be betting that it can survive long enough to force Washington to do the same. For ordinary Iranians, American servicemembers, and civilians across the region, the danger is that testing those two assumptions will require a much longer and more destructive war."
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Trump 'Laying the Groundwork for Election Meddling' With DHS Hunt for Noncitizen Voters
"Trump is pulling DHS agents from human trafficking and terrorism cases to chase his made-up voter fraud conspiracies," said one congressman.
Sep 02, 2026
The New York Times' Wednesday reporting on a US Department of Homeland Security "blitz to find elusive voter fraud" by noncitizens is heightening fears that President Donald Trump will try to meddle in the country's midterm elections, which are just over two months away.
The newspaper revealed that as part of a "hunt for noncitizens among the nation's registered voters" internally called the Unlawful Voter Initiative, hundreds of DHS agents "are scouring voter rolls managed by the states, and are using personally identifiable information about individual voters, such as their dates of birth and partial Social Security numbers, to look them up on those rolls."
"In some cases, investigators are effectively posing as individual voters by plugging their names and personal information into public-facing websites run by the top election official in each state. Some of these sites declare they are meant for individual use, potentially raising privacy concerns," according to the Times, which reviewed related documents and training videos.
While DHS said in a statement that it "is committed to ensuring that only US citizens vote in US elections," and Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin "have made the integrity and security of our elections a top priority," the newspaper noted the "absence of evidence of widespread fraud," and that the department "is pulling agents from their normal duties, which include investigating such serious crimes as human trafficking and terrorism."
Trump infamously refused to accept his 2020 loss, launching various unsuccessful legal battles and even motivating some of his supporters to storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Since returning to power last year, the president has imposed a mass detention and deportation campaign that has killed both immigrants and US citizens while pushing various policies that critics warn are intended to limit legitimate participation in elections, from photo identification requirements to restrictions on voting by mail.
Sharing the reporting on social media Wednesday, American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote: "In other words, hundreds of federal agents are being diverted away from their jobs going after serious criminals and instead told to find needles in a haystack—all to find evidence for Trump's predetermined conclusions. It's a great time to be a criminal in Trump's America."
Democrats on the US House of Representatives' Homeland Security Committee similarly declared that "instead of hunting terrorists and human traffickers, DHS is pulling agents away to investigate a conspiracy theory that has been debunked year after year."
A member of the panel, Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Va.), also stressed that "Trump is pulling DHS agents from human trafficking and terrorism cases to chase his made-up voter fraud conspiracies."
"Even the conservative Heritage Foundation's data shows noncitizen voting is vanishingly rare," he highlighted, referring to the right-wing think tank's database that identifies around 100 cases of noncitizen voting since 2000.
Walkinshaw warned that "Trump is laying the groundwork for election meddling in November."
Daniel Delgado, who served as deputy assistant secretary for immigration policy at DHS during the Biden administration, emphasized that "every agent that's being forced into this witch hunt means one less agent working on critical missions like curbing the flow of fentanyl into the country, or stopping human trafficking and combating terrorism, etc. The administration is deliberately making America less safe."
Cynthia Travieso, executive vice president of state campaigns and programs at the nonprofit All Voting Is Local, ripped the "McCarthy-era-like hunt" as "a waste of resources and a desperate and pathetic attempt to control elections by scapegoating immigrants and spreading lies which can keep specific groups from voting, including Black, Brown, and new Americans."
Travieso continued:
This move by DHS to pull agents that investigate "such serious crimes as human trafficking and terrorism" is based on false claims and debunked conspiracy theories that put thousands of American voters at risk of losing their voter eligibility. Equally outrageous is that the effort also risks potential privacy breaches due to the unclear use of driver's license data, birth dates, and Social Security numbers. It's especially ironic that President Trump’s DHS is expanding its immigrant voter hunt at the same time as the US Postal Service's purported effort to sabotage vote-by-mail, which would harm naturalized citizens who vote by mail at a rate of nearly 8 percentage points higher than native-born citizens. This is part of the blueprint that demonstrates how badly the White House administration wants to control our elections.
States run elections, not the president and not DHS. State election officials have checks and balances in place to verify an individual's voter eligibility and keep voter rolls accurate, and they work incredibly hard to ensure that every eligible voter can vote and that every vote is counted.
Instead of fueling election conspiracy lies, the Trump administration should focus on protecting voters from barriers to the ballot. Any efforts otherwise are a desperate attempt to undermine the will of the people and sow confusion and distrust. We won't let them gaslight us.
Separately on Wednesday, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) filed a lawsuit against DHS, Mullin, and US Attorney General Todd Blanche, accusing them of illegally targeting citizens who were not born in the United States to prevent them from lawfully voting.
"Naturalized citizens are Americans," CHIRLA executive director Angelica Salas said at a news conference in Los Angeles, according to Spectrum News. "They took the oath. They earned their citizenship, and they have the same rights as every other American citizen."
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Trump Condemned for 200+ Extrajudicial Killings After Yearlong Murder Spree at Sea
"This is a make-believe armed conflict, but these are very real killings," said one legal expert.
Sep 02, 2026
Wednesday marked one year since President Donald Trump began bombing boats allegedly smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean—a grim anniversary that sparked a fresh wave of condemnation from rights advocates across the United States and beyond.
"For a year now, the Trump administration has engaged in a terrifying, lawless killing campaign at sea and has yet to provide the public with anything beyond the most threadbare justifications," said Jeff Stein, staff attorney with ACLU's National Security Project, in a statement late Tuesday.
The ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights are suing over the administration's refusal to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request for a legal opinion authored by the US Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) attempting to justify the strikes.
"These strikes have devastated countless families, terrified communities, and, by the administration's own admission, failed to achieve their purported goal of stopping drugs from entering into the United States," Stein said. "We urge leaders in both Congress and the executive branch to put an immediate end to these strikes before anyone else is killed."
Despite mounting outrage over the bombings, which have killed at least 227 people and, as Amnesty International USA's national director for government relations, Amanda Klasing, highlighted Monday, "are illegal under both international and US law," the Republican-controlled Congress has failed to pass any war powers resolutions intended to stop the campaign.
"The Trump administration has summarily killed more than 200 people over the course of the past year, bragging about these killings online and facing no accountability," Ida Sawyer, crisis, conflict, and arms director at Human Rights Watch, said Wednesday. "The victims and their loved ones deserve a full accounting of these operations, and justice for the grave harm they have suffered."
After a two-month pause in the bombings, the administration revived them last week, launching a pair of attacks that killed at least six people, according to social media posts and aerial footage from US Southern Command. The strikes followed SOUTHCOM's early August announcement of an expanded operation across Latin America called Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere.
As MS NOW noted Wednesday:
In September and October 2025, when the strikes began, US Southern Command, known as SOUTHCOM, linked three of the strikes to the Tren de Aragua and Ejército de Liberación Nacional criminal organizations. Most later strikes were described as targeting "a vessel operated by designated terrorist organizations."
But the military's most recent two announcements of strikes simply stated that "confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel’s active involvement in narco-trafficking."
Brian Finucane, a former State Department legal adviser who now advises the US Program at the International Crisis Group, told the outlet that "they are engaging in conduct that is widely regarded to be flagrantly illegal, criminal even, and have not offered anything approaching plausible legal rationale."
The OLC memo may be the administration's "permission slip," Finucane said, but it hasn't actually substantiated claims that the United States is engaged in an armed conflict with cartels that traffic drugs.
"This war framing on the part of the administration is really bogus," he added. "This is a make-believe armed conflict, but these are very real killings."
I don’t think there’s really even a colorable argument that this isn’t mass murder.theintercept.com/2026/09/02/m...
[image or embed]
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes.bsky.social) September 2, 2026 at 9:00 AM
Several Democrats in Congress, from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY) to Senate Minority Whip and Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dick Durbin (Ill.), renewed their criticism of the boat bombings on Wednesday.
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) said that "the most recent strike was four days ago. A year of killing, and this administration has never once come to Congress to justify any of it. This cannot become the way our country goes to war."
"The American people are already paying for one war they didn't want in the first place," he continued, nodding to the illegal six-month assault on Iran. "I fought in Iraq. I know what these wars cost, and I know who pays them. I will use every tool I have as a United States senator to stop this and to defend the Constitution."
House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) noted that "it remains unclear whether these operations have made any real difference in stopping illegal drugs from reaching the United States."
"This is especially true for fentanyl," he noted, which Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth "have repeatedly claimed is the reason for these extrajudicial killings even though we know that it is cocaine—not fentanyl—that is typically shipped via small boats from South America."
Smith also called out the Department of Defense for failing "to publicly provide the costs of these operations, both in terms of dollars and readiness," and declared that "never before in my over 20 years on this committee have I seen such a staggering lack of transparency on behalf of an administration and DOD to meaningfully inform Congress of the use of lethal military force."
However, with Republicans holding narrow majorities in Congress and mostly still refusing to truly challenge the administration on the boat strikes—and various other violent actions around the world—some campaigners are also stepping up pressure on other governments.
"The Trump administration has had complete impunity for this campaign of unlawful killings for a year, and has stated openly that it has no intention of stopping," said Sawyer. "Other countries should refrain from any cooperation on these strikes, and Congress should urgently work to rein in the deadly actions of an administration bent on violating international law."
Jamil Dakwar, director of ACLU's Human Rights Program, said that "the international community must do everything in its power to hold the Trump administration responsible for these extrajudicial killings that are blatant violations of international law."
"No other country should provide any assistance that could contribute to these unlawful US government killings," Dakwar added, calling for an "independent international investigation into this lawless campaign."
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Jayapal and Wyden Demand Probe of 'Unlimited Surveillance' and Subpoena Abuses by Trump Agencies
Agencies have used their subpoena power "to surveil, intimidate, and suppress the free speech of ordinary citizens and even the free press," said the Democrats.
Sep 02, 2026
Under the Trump administration, said Rep. Pramila Jayapal and Sen. Ron Wyden this week, federal agencies' use of subpoena power to surveil Americans has become "institutionalized" in what the two Democrats called "brazen abuses of authority."
Jayapal (Wash.) and Wyden (Ore.) wrote to US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and the acting comptroller general of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Orice Brown, regarding what they called federal agencies’ decades-long practice of attempting "to coerce indefinite silence from private companies that receive subpoenas for customer information."
While federal agencies have the congressionally vested authority to serve companies and service providers with administrative subpoeanas when they are seeking information about the provider's customer or client, the recipient generally maintains the "First Amendment right to notify their customers of the demand, allowing the actual targets of the subpoenas the opportunity to assert their own legal rights or challenge the demand in court," wrote Jayapal and Wyden.
If secrecy is required in a specific case, the agency can apply to a court for a time-limited nondisclosure order, but in the vast majority of cases, the lawmakers said in a statement, "the agencies may not gag recipients of subpoenas."
That appears to have changed under the Trump administration.
Wyden and Jayapal pointed to one incident from July 8, 2025, when Harvard University received three immigration subpoeanas from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) regarding international students, which contained "boilerplate requests for silence."'
"The absurdity of this secrecy demand was demonstrated the very next day, when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a press release celebrating the very enforcement action it had just directed Harvard to keep secret," wrote the lawmakers.
Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), which operates under ICE, has summons authority only for records relating to customs issues such as illegal imports or unpaid customs dues.
However, HSI has used its subpoena power "to surveil, intimidate, and suppress the free speech of ordinary citizens and even the free press"—in one case trying to reveal the identity of an anonymous Instagram user who had criticized and publicized ICE operations, according to the lawmakers.
Earlier this week, The Guardian reported that HSI had used the subpoenas to secretly obtain six months' worth of phone records for Georgia Fort, a Minneapolis-based journalist who, along with former CNN anchor Don Lemon, was arrested in January for covering an anti-ICE protest at a church.
While the secrecy demands that come with subpoenas "carry no force of law," said the lawmakers, "their coercive effect is extremely successful. This leaves customers entirely in the dark about government incursions into their personal data."
Jayapal and Wyden noted that federal agencies were demanding secrecy from subpoenaed companies and third parties for decades before President Donald Trump took office.
For over four decades, they said, the Department of Justice (DOJ) "has treated extra-legal gag requests as standard operating procedure,
regularly instructing the recipients of grand jury subpoenas not to disclose the government's demands."
"Given the severe, asymmetric power dynamics between federal law enforcement and civilian businesses—particularly when the subpoena recipient is a business operating within a highly regulated industry—many corporate legal departments will naturally read an official prosecutorial 'request' for silence as an implied command, choosing compliance over risking scrutiny from federal regulators," wrote Wyden and Jayapal. "This coercive silence is particularly insidious because it targets corporate policies intended to protect consumers. For nearly every American industry, including telecommunications, technology, and healthcare, Congress has neither required nor prohibited notice of subpoenas. Absent a court order or statute saying otherwise, notice to customers is a protected exercise of free speech that furthers government transparency and customer privacy."
The lawmakers called on the GAO to conduct a comprehensive audit of the DOJ and DHS as well as the agencies they oversee regarding their use of gag requests in subpoenas.
Such an audit would "help ensure that agencies do not abuse their subpoena authorities at the expense of privacy and free speech rights," said Jayapal and Wyden.
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Trump Commerce Secretary Once Said Data Centers ‘Suck Water,’ Now Scoffs That Such Concerns Are Just ‘Propaganda’
"Data centers don't use water," laughed Howard Lutnick during an interview. In fact, across seven states, they rely on about 3.4 trillion gallons of it per year.
Sep 02, 2026
President Donald Trump's commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, told a brazen lie on Wednesday while trying to defend the administration's support for rapid data center expansion amid growing public backlash from voters concerned about their extreme electricity and water use.
Asked on CNBC's "SquawkBox" about how politicians in both parties were responding to voter outrage, Lutnick laughed the concerns off.
"One of my favorite things is when people talk about data centers using water," Lutnick chuckled. "The number one product in America that uses water is cattle."
"I mean, data centers don't use water," Lutnick continued. "This is propaganda by our adversaries to try to slow us down."
Lutnick is correct that beef cattle production—which uses about 6 trillion gallons per year, according to the US Department of Agriculture—involves much greater amounts of water consumption than data centers.
But the contention that data centers "don't use water" is egregiously false. A report out Tuesday from the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit water policy research organization, found that data centers in the US directly use anywhere from 270 to 3.9 million gallons of water per day.
About 74% of that water, which is withdrawn from local sources near the data center, is consumed rather than returned to the same watershed, the report found.
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that in 2023, US data centers directly consumed about 17 billion gallons of water. Since then, data center capacity in the US has more than doubled, according to the commercial real estate firm CBRE.
Water directly consumed by data centers also only represents a fraction of their overall demand. Most of the water being used is not directly pumped into the centers to cool servers, but is used for the power generation that supplies the centers.
A report out last month from the corporate sustainability organization Ceres found that across the seven US states that host about half of all US data centers—Virginia, Texas, California, Illinois, Georgia, Ohio, and Arizona—the facilities depend on 3.4 trillion gallons of freshwater for electricity generation per year.
Lutnick's comparison of national water use between data centers and cattle farming also overlooks that the effects are often concentrated heavily in the areas where data centers are located.
In Newton County, Georgia, for instance, families told The New York Times that shortly after Meta broke ground on a $750 million data center project in 2018, their taps began to run dry, and water rates soared. According to Meta's environmental data, the center withdrew about 146 megaliters, or 38.6 million gallons, of water in 2024.
In Fayette County, Georgia, residents complained of low water pressure only to find that a QTS data center had covertly used about 29 million gallons of water without paying for it, far exceeding the amount agreed upon during the planning process. The company was ultimately required to pay back nearly $150,000.
In New Carlisle, Indiana, about a dozen residents reported that their wells had gone dry during the construction of Amazon Web Services' massive data center campus. One resident told the Indy Star that she'd gone 18 months without running water and had to bathe using bottled water from the store.
Lutnick's claim doesn't just contradict the facts, but his own statements from just over a year ago on Fox News, as MeidasTouch senior digital editor Acyn Torabi noted.
Attempting to promote data centers as a vehicle for job growth, the secretary emphasized that "these AI things suck water" and that they will "need a plumber."
The Trump administration has made the rapid expansion of data centers central to its "AI Action Plan." But Trump and his team have struggled to sell the vision to voters, including in their own party.
A national survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center last month found that 61% of voters oppose the construction of new data centers in their area. That included 69% of Democrats, but also 54% of Republicans, and 53% of independents.
Critics described Lutnick's dismissive remarks about voters' concerns as a sign of how out of touch the administration was with the public on this issue and how much their data center PR push is failing.
Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI) said it showed that "our government is being run by morons."
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'We Are in a Constitutional Crisis': Congress Urged to Sue Trump to End Iran War
"Sitting and doing nothing is not an option and is eroding our democracy and system of checks and balances."
Sep 02, 2026
With no end in sight to President Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran, Congress is being urged to take legal action to bring the conflict to an end.
Jamal Abdi, executive director at National Iranian American Council (NIAC) Action, said on Wednesday that Congress must go to court to enforce the war powers resolution that passed in the House and the Senate earlier this year.
"We are in a constitutional crisis and our lawmakers cannot simply roll over or bide their time as Trump traps the country in an illegal forever war," said Abdi. "For the first time in US history, Congress has passed legislation mandating the president withdraw from the war, and now they must take him to court to enforce it."
Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced a resolution in July that would compel House Speaker Mike Johnson (D-La.) to sue Trump and enforce the will of Congress to end the war.
However, Abdi argued that US lawmakers are not moving with the proper urgency to stop Trump from continuing his illegal attacks on Iran, which have been carried out for more than six months despite receiving no congressional authorization.
"Congress must assert its authority as a co-equal branch of government and sue to end the administration’s illegal war," Abdi emphasized. “We need urgent action, not more deliberation. Sitting and doing nothing is not an option and is eroding our democracy and system of checks and balances."
According to Politico congressional reporter Riley Rogerson, Meeks on Tuesday said that there are currently no plans to bring up a new war powers resolution, although he didn't rule out taking action.
"Democrats are unsure how long the House will be in before the midterms," wrote Rogerson, "which makes planning a challenge."
Johnson on Tuesday showed no appetite for getting Congress more involved in the conflict during a testy exchange with CNN reporter Manu Raju, who asked the Louisiana Republican if the American public should judge him for the negative impact the war has had on their personal finances.
Speaker Johnson defensive about his past projections about the Iran war, including repeatedly saying it’s just a skirmish that would be over in short order and cause just a “temporary blip” in gas prices.
More than six months in, asked him if the public should judge him on his… pic.twitter.com/0BpVaGy6xC
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) September 1, 2026
"That is one of the stupidest questions you've ever asked," Johnson replied.
"What, why is that stupid?" Raju asked.
"I have nothing to do with the prosecution of the war across the globe," Johnson said.
Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution states that Congress, not the president, has the power to declare war.
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