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Liam Tadeo and his dad Victor Martinez Nieto
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The Worst of The Worst

Well damn, we sure feel safer knowing ICE pulled 5-year-old Liam Tadeo and his construction worker dad Victor off Austin's streets on their way to a soccer game before Liam could start kindergarten the next day; also that they were held at a family concentration camp, ICE refused to let Liam's mother take him, and both father and son will "self-deport" to not further sully our pristine white shores. Question: How do these sick fucks sleep at night?

Thanks to the obscene $200 billion-plus gifted to DHS and ICE by their evil overlords, arrests of undocumented or at least unwanted immigrants surged to nearly 50,000 largely innocent people in July, a 15% spike from a month earlier and the regime's highest monthly arrest total to date. So yes, the sadists are still at it, just more quietly than when a psychotic Noem and Bovino were blasting out histrionic videos of daredevil agents dropping from helicopters onto apartment rooftops to grab terrified families - images reportedly, inexplicably "provoking a lot of ordinary people." Wusses, all.

Many recent arrests come during "traffic stops," increasingly with the help of partnering state and local law enforcement lured by "generous financial incentives," especially in Texas and Florida; ICE is also arresting more Haitians whose protections have been stripped away. Among those detained are over 6,200 kids, 10 times more than during Biden's tenure, despite ongoing, fantastical DHS claims they're going after the "worst of the worst" murderers, drug traffickers, sex offenders - and despite ghastly data showing up to 85% of ICE thugs themselves have sex offenses on their records, most against children. New data, like old data, also shows less than a quarter of those arrested have any criminal convictions.

Elsewhere, ICE abuses go on apace. A sailor aboard the troubled USS Lincoln said ICE has taken his father, who had a work permit, into custody. “Having a family member in the military is not a free pass to violate our nation’s laws,” said a DHS statement "in the same support-our-troops spirit Trump is so famous for." In an interview, the mother, father and sister of Alex Pretti family said no officials have come forward in the last seven months to retract or apologize for the "disgusting" claims of "assassin" and "domestic terrorist" they made about Alex - "We still hear those words about our child,” said his mother Susan - nor have any criminal charges been filed against his killers.

Meanwhile, J.D. Vance just came to Maine to spew racist lies, flaunt his "trademark absence of charisma," and claim, "If you bring in millions and millions of illegal aliens and give them houses that ought to go by right to American citizens, it's going to increase the cost of housing for everybody else." He also dismissed ICE's killing of Colombian Johan Durán Guerrero, who had a social security card, two jobs, a wife and a three-year-old daughter. Worried residents, he said, should "have a little bit of perspective" to ensure "that poison stops coming into our country." Troy Jackson called J.D. "a dirtbag": "I mean, he had a life." As to Susan Collins, who declined to regret giving ICE "$70 billion more to pull this shit off": "I’m sick of your ‘concerns.’"

And on Aug. 16, brave ICE thugs stopped five-year-old Liam Tadeo - their second small Liam like the bunny-hat-wearing Liam Ramos in Minnesota - and his father Victor Martinez Nieto on their way to play soccer. Without bothering with the nicety of pretending it was a legit traffic stop, they asked Victor, originally from Mexico, if he had legal status. Candidly, he said no; in 2025, he'd been arrested by ICE, "voluntarily" left, then "criminally" reentered the U.S. to (horrors) be with his wife and son. Heart-rending video soon surfaced of Liam crying beside his father and trying to hold one of his hands, cuffed behind him, as Victor tried to console his tearful son, talking to him as they walked. It was the day before Liam was set to start kindergarten.

They were both taken to the for-profit Dilley concentration camp, which rights groups have repeatedly accused of medical neglect, poor living conditions and abuse. According to Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, their family's attorney, Victor begged ICE to release Liam to his mother Maria, also not a legal citizen, at home, or another member of the family. ICE refused, though DHS proudly, routinely declaims ICE "will place the children with a safe person the parent designates," like how they also contend Dilley is "retrofitted for families, with access to teachers, classrooms, and curriculum booklets...generously funded by the U.S. taxpayer." Instead, they had Victor sign papers in English he didn't fully understand, and booked both father and son.

Lincoln-Goldfinch says Maria is "desperate and distraught, separated from her child and worrying about his well-being." Back at their home, "It feels like when you go to someone’s house after a sudden death, and there’s a wake or a gathering. Everybody is just stunned." Maria released a statement: "Liam was supposed to start kindergarten this week. Instead he is (in) detention. He should be in school, playing soccer, and at home with his family." Saturday, CNN aired emotional video of her talking by phone to her five-year-old. “I love you so much and I miss you so much, my love,” she tearfully told Liam in Spanish. “Don’t despair, my love, okay?” Lacking options, Liam timidly responds, "Okay." One furious, horrified online comment: "Anyone!!??!!"

This week, Austin's KUT News reported Victor has decided to be deported to Mexico along with his son, rather than risk Liam being separated from him and placed in a dystopian regime's custody as an "unaccompanied migrant child.” Said Lincoln-Goldfinch, "His family did what any family would do: Agree." As Maria reportedly struggles to find a way to re-unite with her family - "My son is only five years old" - Americans fume about "sadistic barbarians harming humanity every single day." "How sick can these people be? I used to think merciless psychopathic villains were only found in movies and fiction," said one. Also, "America has concentration camps. I. Hate. It. Here." and, "That poor little boy, That poor family. I am so tired."

Meanwhile, Texas' Dem lawmakers have called for Liam to be released and for Dilley to be shut down. "I just sat with Liam's mother as she found out what it means to have your child held hostage by ICE. It was horrifying," wrote Rep. Greg Casar, who charged Liam's arrest showed Trump uses children “as bait and leverage to fuel his mass deportation machine.” "Liam should be starting kindergarten this week, and instead he's sitting in a trailer prison." Rep. Joaquin Castro said ICE denied his request to visit Liam at Dilley in what he called "shady stuff," and he vowed to return; he also cited human rights violations, privacy concerns, and untenable phone, video call and e-mail strictures: “I’m telling y’all, ICE is getting worse."

Because this is ghoul-filled America in 2026, Liam's aunt Patricia Resendiz has begun a Gofundme to help with legal expenses and her sister Maria's household costs, as Victor was the sole provider. "If we manage to get Liam and his dad to go free, Liam will also need psychological support, as the detention has left him traumatized. These funds will be to mitigate all aspects of child detention," she wrote. "The detention of Liam and my brother-in-law was cruel. They are not criminals - they were simply on their way to a soccer match. Liam is a beautiful, intelligent, and big-hearted little boy. My sister is devastated, as are we. Liam was detained right in front of my son, his cousin. My son told me that ICE agents said to Liam, 'You can't escape.'"

We feel safer already.

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Beef Prices In U.S. Continue To Rise, As Cattle Herds Shrink And Demand Remains High
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‘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."

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Top OpenAI Executive Labels Social Security a ‘Fraud’ That Must be Dismantled
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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."

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Donald Trump
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'We'd Really Prefer Affordable Healthcare': Trump 'Lake America' Order Ridiculed as Inane Distraction

The United States is locked in another Middle East quagmire, the American economy is shedding jobs, wage growth is decelerating, and the costs of essentials are rising, but President Donald Trump on Thursday took time to hold an Oval Office event for the signing of an executive order renaming Lake Ontario to "Lake America," as his damaging trade war with Canada intensifies.

"We'd really prefer affordable healthcare," the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen wrote in response to the president's order, which was widely derided as idiotic and pointless, particularly amid skyrocketing health insurance premiums, large-scale loss of food aid, and other crises sparked by Trump and his Republican allies in Congress.

"No, President Trump," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote following the White House event. "The American people don’t want to rename Lake Ontario Lake America. They want affordable healthcare, childcare, housing, education, nutrition assistance—all of which you have massively cut in order to pay for your $1 trillion tax break to the top 1%."

Trump—who recently admitted that he doesn't "think about Americans’ financial situation" when considering the impacts of waging war on Iran—said Thursday that the "Lake America" name change was something he had been "thinking about for a long time, actually."

Trump's order instructs the US interior secretary to, within 30 days, "take all appropriate actions to rename as 'Lake America' the body of water currently named as Lake Ontario."

"We’re on it, Mr. President!" Interior Secretary Doug Burgum wrote on social media in response to Trump's directive.

After Trump floated the name change earlier this week, Canadian Industry Minister Mélanie Joly responded that "we'll always call it Lake Ontario."

"We're proud of the Great Lakes... and we'll stand up for what we have," said Joly. "I really think that, with all these shenanigans happening, we'll just be smart and we'll be strategic, and we'll fight back."

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who leads the only US state that touches Lake Ontario, said Wednesday that the Trump administration "should be focusing on ways to mend relationships with Canada so our farmers and our consumers and our families do not continue suffering from this inane war over tariffs."

"The fact that [the name change] is even part of the conversation shows how absurd the Trump administration is," said Hochul.

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Consensus Miami 2026
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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.

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​Tom Fletcher, United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, briefs the UN Security Council
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Amid Civil War, Sudan's Humanitarian Crisis Worsening Due to 'Lack of Action': UN Official

Over three years into a civil war in Sudan, the humanitarian crisis is getting worse in the African nation due to "a lack of action" by the international community, a United Nations leader told the UN Security Council on Monday.

The war between the government's Sudanese Armed Forces and a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) began in April 2023. Now, "more than two-thirds of the people of Sudan are in desperate need of lifesaving support," said Tom Fletcher, UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator.

"Humanitarians are seizing every opportunity to reach those in need. But we need protection for civilians. We need de-escalation," Fletcher stressed, detailing efforts to provide aid throughout the country. "Across Sudan, our teams navigate frontlines, drone attacks, insecurity, and bureaucratic red tape."

"I usually end these briefings with three asks: Uphold international humanitarian law, fund the response, and help end the conflict. But today I won't because this council has heard those asks again and again," he explained. "Instead, the ask is that we not have another meeting where the council simply describes the problem."

According to Fletcher: "Sudan does not suffer from a lack of analysis. It suffers from a lack of action. The people of Sudan need food, water, and medicine. Yet the world sends drones, weapons, and mercenaries. The people of Sudan need sustained, courageous diplomacy. Yet the world is too often indifferent and distracted. The people of Sudan need peace and dignity. Yet others use Sudan's land and people as pieces in a regional struggle for power, gold, and pride."

"This council is not powerless," he emphasized. "The international community is not powerless. The tragedy of Sudan is not that we do not know what to do. It is that we have not yet found the will to do it."

Fletcher also pointed to remarks to the Security Council from Rosemary DiCarlo, under-secretary-general for political and peacebuilding affairs, who noted the deadly impact of drones and that the true death toll "is likely to be in the hundreds of thousands."

Roughly 13 million people have been displaced, making it hard to tally deaths, but "brutal mass killings and atrocities, abductions of women and girls, and mass rapes are recurring patterns," DiCarlo said, declaring that "the consequences of this conflict will be long-lasting and should shock us all."

The Security Council meeting came less than three weeks before a two-decade-old Darfur arms embargo is set to expire, absent a new agreement. The US envoy in attendance, Massad Boulos, called for broadening the embargo to cover all of Sudan.

"The United States has put forward a strong resolution that provides for four key things," he said, including "expanding the arms embargo across the entire territory of Sudan," applying the restrictions to all armed parties, making clear that it applies to drones, and strengthening surveillance of violations.

Earlier this month, US Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) led 20 senators in demanding that the Trump administration go beyond denouncing Sudan's paramilitary group and take "concrete action" to prevent more mass atrocities. They wrote that "these actions should include ceasing certain US arms sales to external actors that are fueling this war, including the United Arab Emirates, which continues to arm the RSF."

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