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Latest News
'Bessent Is a Political Actor': Treasury Move on Bond Market Seen as Midterm Damage Control
"Trump is going to pump billions of dollars into the bond market to push down interest rates through the election, then let everything fall apart again," said one critic.
Aug 19, 2026
The Trump administration on Wednesday unveiled a plan to ease upward pressure on the cost of US debt by doubling its bond buybacks through November.
In announcing that it will buy back "at least" $4 billion worth of bonds over a two-month period, the US Department of Treasury said it was seeking "to provide greater liquidity support in longer-dated nominal sectors where there is consistent strong sponsorship from market participants."
While the announcement did result in interest rates for US treasuries dropping, economists and other political observers are warning that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's scheme to stop spiking yields will prove ineffective over the long term.
In a Wednesday interview with NOTUS, Joseph Brusuelas, principal and chief economist for RSM US LLP, said that Bessent was making decisions based solely on the political fortunes of the Republican Party.
"Bessent is a political actor," Brusuelas said. "His interest is purely short-term and is organized around the upcoming election and not a return to price stability. This is what fiscal dominance looks like as the fiscal authority leans on the central bank to subordinate its goal of price stability to the government’s borrowing and political needs."
The economist's analysis was echoed by Drop Site News reporter Ryan Grim, who argued in a social media post that President Donald Trump's administration was scrambling to save its endangered GOP congressional majority.
"Trump is going to pump billions of dollars into the bond market to push down interest rates through the election, then let everything fall apart again," Grim wrote. "Not sure I’ve seen a more nakedly electoral use of this amount of money before, for such a targeted amount of time."
Krishna Guha, head of global policy and central bank strategy at Evercore ISI, argued in a Wednesday research note flagged by CNBC that the bond buyback scheme "changes almost nothing in terms of the fundamentals in particular the unchanged need to finance the tidal wave of hyperscaler debt in addition to very large government deficits."
Adam Josephson, founder of Sakonnet Research, also expressed skepticism of the buyback plan's effectiveness in a Wednesday interview with Politico.
“They’re trying everything possible to limit upward pressure on long-term yields,” Josephson said. “Nothing has worked. And why would this work? It’s too small to matter.”
Experts say that bond yields have been spiking to highs not seen since the start of the Great Recession due to investor anxiety over a number of factors, including inflation, the size of the US government's debt, and Trump's illegal war with Iran.
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Federal Judge Blocks Trump and RFK Effort to Get More Teens Pregnant
The ruling, said the government watchdog Public Citizen, is "a win for young Americans' well-being."
Aug 19, 2026
The Teen Pregnancy Prevention program, first authorized through bipartisan legislation in 2009, has been credited with helping to dramatically reduce the number of American teenagers who have experienced unwanted pregnancies in the past decade and a half, dropping by more than 65% over 16 years, according to one congressional report.
Despite the best efforts of President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a federal judge's ruling on Wednesday sent the message that the push to reduce teen pregnancy in the US will continue, with the administration's limits on the program's federal grants paused.
Judge Christopher Cooper of the US District Court for the District of Columbia granted a preliminary injunction in the case of Hennepin County, Minnesota v. US Department of Health and Human Services, in which officials joined King County in Washingtin state, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) in challenging HHS's changes to the program's grant policy. The plaintiffs were represented by Public Citizen and Democracy Forward.
The changes, said Cooper, were “likely arbitrary and capricious.”
The new policy, announced in June, canceled 53 of 66 active grants that had gone to public universities, health departments, and nonprofits for programming related to sex education, including information that was given to teens on contraception and communication with sexual partners.
In Trump's 2027 budget, the grants are described as promoting "radical leftist ideology," and officials claim there is no evidence that teen pregnancy prevention programs that go beyond educating young people about abstinence have "contributed to the historic decline in teen pregnancy, which is now at an all-time low."
Under new guidance issued in June, Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) program grantees are required to focus lessons on abstinence, deemphasize contraception, and teach teens about fertility and "body literacy."
“HHS is perfectly entitled to formulate its own views about how to stem teen pregnancy—or even whether it is worth preventing at all—and to pursue policy initiatives consistent with its viewpoint. But it is not at liberty, under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), to impose conditions on grant recipients that Congress did not intend or that are unreasonable or unexplained. The preliminary record suggests that HHS has done just that,” wrote Cooper in the ruling.
"Through the TPP, Congress sought to fund a range of evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention strategies, not just abstinence. According to unrebutted record evidence, programs that teach abstinence to the exclusion of all other approaches are ineffective in delaying sexual initiation and reducing adolescent pregnancy, at least as a general matter," Cooper continued.
The judge took aim at the administration's promotion of "body literacy," which he called “a nebulous concept that appears to elevate fertility and marital procreation over well-tested forms of contraception and pregnancy prevention.”
Cooper also suggested that HHS had not bothered to find genuine evidence of its claims about "body literacy," instead "remarkably" referencing "public health studies that appear either not to exist or not to support the propositions for which they are cited—a hallmark of AI-generated citations.”
The judge stopped short of reinstating the dozens of grants, amounting to about $67 million, that have been terminated, saying it was unclear whether he had the authority to do so.
The plaintiffs and other advocates of comprehensive sex education have called for a permanent injunction; Cooper called on both parties in the case to propose a schedule for next steps by September 1.
Callie Simon, executive director of SIECUS, said the group was "encouraged that the court has halted implementation of the new harmful policy" but emphasized that "the impacts of terminating existing grants remain."
“Today’s decision sends a clear message that the Trump-Vance administration cannot replace the proven, bipartisan Teen Pregnancy Prevention program with an ideologically driven alternative that harms young people,” said Simon. "Communities across the country are still without the evidence-based programs they relied on, and we will continue fighting to ensure young people have access to the sex education they deserve.”
Sandra J. Valenciano, director and health officer for public health in Seattle and King counties, said local communities were facing a measurable loss due to HHS' stripping of TPP grants
“This federal action threatened our ability to complete a study on a new science-based, community-informed sex education curriculum specifically for young men and boys,” said Valenciano. “This ruling gives us hope that we may still be able to get to the finish line with this study and ultimately empower more young people to build healthy families if, when, and how they choose.”
Ruth Richardson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood North Central States, said the ruling "reaffirms the value of trusted, evidence-based education programs that help youth make informed choices and plan for their futures."
"Attacks on the Teen Pregnancy Prevention program not only put young people at risk, they also risk increasing costs for taxpayers," said Richardson. "No one benefits from these politically motivated attacks. It’s time for them to end.”
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Bring Back the Sears Home! Proposal Calls for 500,000 High-Quality, Affordable Starter Houses to Ease Crisis
"Policymakers must pursue creative, tangible, and lasting solutions that bring homeownership back into reach."
Aug 19, 2026
As young families are increasingly priced out of the housing market, a group of economic researchers is pushing to revive an idea from the past to bring the distant dream of homeownership back within reach: mass-produced homes.
A report published Wednesday by the Groundwork Collaborative proposes a federal program to subsidize the creation of 500,000 prefabricated houses over the next eight years—starter homes that they estimate would be drastically more affordable than the ones currently on the market.
The report was written by three economic policy analysts who served under former President Joe Biden: Noah Ball-Burack and Emily DiVito, who worked on policy for the Treasury Department, and Alex Jacquez, who was Biden's special assistant for economic development and industrial strategy at the White House National Economic Council.
The proposal draws from history: From 1908-40, around 75,000 Americans ordered mass-produced homebuilding kits from Sears, Roebuck & Co. through catalogs, which provided pre-cut lumber, doors, windows, and other materials to construct a home that ended up being considerably cheaper to build than those constructed conventionally.
These "Sears homes" were not only fully functional but also durable: More than 80 years after the program was discontinued, thousands of them are still standing today.
Groundwork's researchers argued that marshaling the government's resources, a modern Sears home program could go great lengths toward combating the housing affordability crisis.
"For too many families, homeownership has gone from a milestone to a mirage. Decades of under-building have left us with an affordable housing shortage that’s pricing people out of their communities," DiVito said. "Policymakers must pursue creative, tangible, and lasting solutions that bring homeownership back into reach. The Modern Sears Home program does just that.”
The group called for the Congress to appropriate between $44 billion and $75 billion over eight years---less than the US spends on the military in a single month---to guarantee large orders of factory-built homes, acquire and prepare land for them, and then sell the completed houses to eligible buyers with government-backed affordable mortgages.
They estimate that factory-produced single-family homes could be sold for roughly $170,000-$215,000 each. That's around half the median price of a new single-family home, which has increased nearly 25% since the start of the decade.
"Sears offered these homes for profit," the researchers wrote. "The federal government—with greater resources, lower borrowing costs, and unmatched power to scale—can do it better."
Unlike private capital, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which would administer the program, doesn't have a profit motive and is capable of guaranteeing large amounts of demand so that manufacturers can build scale.
And since the goal is to ensure that people are housed rather than to increase profit margins, the researchers argued that the homes are less vulnerable to the fluctuations of the housing market, which currently disincentivizes lowering rent.
"Private developers build only when projects pencil, meaning that expected rents, net of construction, and financing costs, clear the rate of return their investors demand," the report explains. "This math ties new housing supply to high rents. If rents begin to fall, private capital will walk away.”
The researchers argued that their proposal would not just benefit those who are able to purchase new Sears homes, which HUD would target at households earning 60%-100% of a local area's median income, but everyone in the housing market, by driving up supply.
"Sustainably lowering housing prices relative to other prices in the economy requires public investment," they wrote. "The government can either build housing itself or finance private construction at below-market returns. It should do both.”
The proposal comes as pre-fab homes are being viewed increasingly as a policy solution to confront the housing crisis and as an opportunity for developers looking to attract young homebuyers.
Eager to build cheap starter homes fast, developers are experimenting with entire subdivisions of factory-built houses, as The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.
New York state, meanwhile, is trying out a miniature version of what Groundwork has proposed, building 1,500-square-foot homes in Syracuse, Schenectady, and Newcomb. The state has completed three homes so far and awarded funding for 211 more.
According to a 2023 report by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, these kinds of higher-end manufactured homes, known as "CrossMods," cost 27% less on average compared to an identical home built on-site.
The ones that have gone up in New York have borne out these cost-saving projections. They took about a third of the time to construct as traditional homes and cost about $250,000 to build and install, about half the cost for a comparable house, according to the state's affordable housing agency.
An affordable housing law that passed Congress in June also took steps toward expanding factory-built housing with a bipartisan bill passed last month that removed regulatory barriers to manufactured homes and sought to make construction easier to finance. However, the law does not provide any new federal funding for housing production.
The researchers said this was a good start that could help speed up the process of building homes. But they said it was far too narrow to really address the problem.
"It will take a government willing to act not at the margins of the market, but at its center—financing cheaply, building at scale,” they wrote. "The technology and policy levers to realize this vision already exist. The question is not whether the federal government can act at this scale—but whether it will."
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Amnesty Warns of Right-Wing Argentinian Government's AI-Driven Surveillance State
"When powerful people don’t want accountability, they attack those who ask questions and use whatever is at their disposal to monitor, control, and repress."
Aug 19, 2026
Amnesty International on Wednesday released a report detailing how the Argentine government under the leadership of right-wing President Javier Milei has created a massive artificial intelligence surveillance state that the human rights group described as "a techno-authoritarian infrastructure of social control."
According to Amnesty, Argentina's Military of National Security invested in several pieces of surveillance technology between 2024 and 2025, including licenses for Maltego, an open-source investigator platform that collects and organizes data from "social media, websites, the dark web, personal data, technical infrastructure, and other open sources"; and Clearview AI, a facial recognition platform with "a widely known track record of mass exploitation of biometric data without sufficient legal grounds."
The government also procured drones equipped with automated tracking capabilities and thermal cameras capable of providing real-time image transmission, Amnesty found.
This surveillance state, Amnesty said, has created a "chilling effect" across the country that has reduced participation in protests and forced activists to reduce their public exposure and take further precautions when planning demonstrations.
Ana Tapia, an activist who has been protesting against pension cuts made by Milei's government, described the government's aggressive surveillance tactics against herself and her fellow demonstrators.
"We’ve all been fully identified for a long time now," Tapia explained. "Sometimes as you’re walking... and suddenly you see the drone hovering just above your head. Sometimes within six feet. Why so close? Why is it so invasive?”
Matías Darabós, an activist who documents police abuses, similarly described the omnipresence of the surveillance state.
"There is a very strong feeling that you are being controlled and watched," said Darabós. "In fact, when we go to marches to record what goes on, they are constantly pointing at us or filming us."
Journalists described being subjected to what they believe are coordinated harassment campaigns in which they are swarmed with violent rhetoric and threats which they believe are related to increased state surveillance.
Paula Cejas, director of the Latin America Office of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), told Amnesty that "social media and the streets are no longer a safe space for journalists."
"Even I myself think about what I’m going to post to the IFJ account," Cejas explained, "what language to use so that I’m not put on a list and get us all harassed."
Another journalist who spoke anonymously with Amnesty similarly said she had grown incredibly careful of what she posts on social media compared to the past.
"Before, I used to comment and give my opinion on everything, now I just use it recreationally," the journalist said. "I think a lot about the words I use, I moderated my rhetoric and reduced my interaction 100%, especially on Twitter," the platform Elon Musk renamed X.
Paola Garcia Ray, deputy director of Amnesty International Argentina, summed up the report by arguing that "pervasive surveillance is being used against Argentinians in both physical and digital spaces, to devastating effect" on civil society.
"These technologies have become an integral part of the infrastructure of state control, targeting dissent, deterring protest movements, and harassing marginalized groups, among other authoritarian practices,” Garcia Ray emphasized. "When powerful people don’t want accountability, they attack those who ask questions and use whatever is at their disposal to monitor, control, and repress."
Milei is a political ally of US tech billionaire Peter Thiel, a co-founder of AI surveillance company Palantir whose presence in Argentina has resulted in protests demanding his ouster from the country.
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Opening ‘Worthless’ Criminal Probes, IDF Admits Massacring 5-Year-Old Hind Rajab and Family, 15 Gaza Medics
"933 days since Hind Rajab and her family were killed. All that time, Israel lied, denied, deflected, distorted, gaslit," said one critic. "This is their modus operandi with high-profile crimes. The 'criminal probe' will be a sham."
Aug 19, 2026
After years of denying responsibility, the Israel Defense Forces announced Wednesday that it is opening what critics fear will be sham criminal investigations into numerous high-profile killings of Palestinians in Gaza, while separately clearing troops involved in other deadly attacks, including a massacre of World Central Kitchen aid workers.
The IDF Military Advocate-General’s Corps published its first war crimes report since October 2023 on Wednesday, covering more than 150 probes into massacres and other killings of Palestinians.
The most infamous case involves the January 2024 attack in which invading IDF troops fired hundreds of rounds of ammunition at a car carrying 5-year-old Hind Rajab and six relatives as they tried to flee Gaza City, and then attacked a Palestine Red Crescent Society ambulance dispatched to rescue survivors. The ambulance attack killed two PRCS medics.
Other "exceptional operational incidents" by IDF troops are also under investigation, including the apparent execution-style killing of 15 on-duty first responders—among them PRCS medics, Civil Defense personnel, and a United Nations worker—traveling in a convoy of ambulances and other vehicles in Rafah in March 2025.
The IDF cleared troops involved in the April 2024 attack on a World Central Kitchen humanitarian convoy in Deir al-Balah that killed seven members of an international aid team working to feed Palestinians amid the burgeoning famine caused by Israel's "complete siege" of Gaza.
The military also cleared troops involved in a February 2024 tank attack on a house in al-Mawasi where Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staff and their families were sheltering. Two women were killed and seven others were wounded in the attack.
Israeli officials had initially either denied carrying out these attacks or claimed the victims were members of or associated with Hamas, the Palestinian resistance group that led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
"The Israeli army lied through their teeth. They claimed no Israeli troops were operating in the area where Hind Rajab and her family were killed," British journalist Owen Jones wrote Wednesday on X. "They lie and lie and lie again—yet Western media outlets still treat Israeli claims as credible."
Few critics of Israel welcomed the IDF probes, while many said they won't accomplish anything.
"Investigations into violations committed by Israeli forces overwhelmingly end without meaningful examination, prosecution, or punishment," the Brussels-based Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), which was established to challenge Israeli impunity, said Wednesday in a statement. "In the small number of cases in which soldiers have been convicted of crimes, the punishments imposed have often been exceptionally lenient or administrative in nature."
HRF continued:
The killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh provides a stark example. After conducting its own investigation into her May 2022 killing, the Israeli military acknowledged in September 2022 that there was a “high possibility” that Abu Akleh had been shot by Israeli military fire. Yet the Military Advocate General concluded that there was no suspicion of a criminal offense warranting a Military Police investigation. No criminal investigation was opened.
"This is not new," HRF stressed. "It is the continuation of a decadeslong pattern in which announcements of internal investigations have repeatedly failed to produce meaningful accountability for crimes committed against Palestinians."
HRF noted that 88% of publicly reported Israeli probes into alleged IDF crimes in Gaza "had either been closed without a finding of wrongdoing or remained under review without any publicly reported outcome. Only one resulted in a prison sentence."
"Against this record, the sudden announcement of criminal investigations into the murders of Hind Rajab and the 15 Palestinian paramedics should not be mistaken for a genuine turn toward justice," the group said. "These investigations come amid mounting international scrutiny... Their purpose is not to deliver accountability, but to preserve its appearance while perpetuating impunity."
In the United States—which backs Israel's war with billions of dollars in annual armed aid, diplomatic cover, and genocide denial—Council on American Islamic Relations national deputy director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said Wednesday that “everyone, including the Israeli government and its supporters, have long known that Israel was responsible for deliberately murdering Hind Rajab, her family, and the paramedics who tried to save her."
"The Netanyahu regime’s belated admission that it murdered Hind and will open a token criminal investigation is worthless. No one should take it seriously," he added, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza.
“Instead, our nation should hold the Israeli government accountable for killing Hind and tens of thousands of other innocent people during the ongoing genocide in Gaza by suspending military aid and imposing sanctions on Israel," Mitchell added. "So should the international community.”
Israeli scholar Shaiel Ben-Ephraim asked on X: "After spending over two years denying even having been in the area, Israel finally admitted to shooting Hind Rajab. Why?"
"Certainly not because of accountability," he continued. "A source in the IDF legal department told the Jerusalem Post that issuing real decisions, including ones critical of soldiers, is 'critical to defend Israel' in those forums and to 'preserve receiving military weapons overseas from the US and other allies.'"
"And because this is the highest profile case of Israeli murder in this genocide, and the most difficult to defend, since Israel had advance knowledge that there was a child in the car, this is the one they chose," Ben-Ephraim added.
Israel's 1,047-day assault on Gaza has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, including thousands who are believed to be dead and buried beneath rubble. Around 2 million other Gazans have been forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.
Attacks on Palestinian children—more than 21,500 of whom have been killed by Israeli forces—and aid workers, as well as the obliteration of Gaza's healthcare infrastructure, have been defining features of a war that United Nations experts, human rights groups, scholars, and a South Africa-led case currently before the International Court of Justice call a genocide.
The plight of Hind Rajab drew worldwide attention after the PRCS published a recording of a desperate phone call made by Hind and her 15-year-old cousin Layan Hamadeh, who was also killed in the car. The recording, which continues for several hours while the mortally wounded child slowly died, was the basis of the award-winning 2025 film "The Voice of Hind Rajab."
Exhaustive investigations, especially into the Hind Rajab massacre, have already occurred. Forensic Architecture, Earshot, and Al Jazeera published the most detailed reconstruction of the attack; The Washington Post, Sky News, and others also documented the events of the massacre.
In the case of the 15 first responders, Forensic Architecture and Earshot, The Washington Post, Bellingcat, The New York Times, and other media outlets investigated the massacre, with some of the reports refuting the IDF's initial claim that the convoy vehicles—at which Israeli forces fired around 1,000 rounds of ammunition—had approached without headlights or emergency signals. The Times affirmed that victims were shot in the head execution-style, while the Post also documented the burial of the responders and their destroyed vehicles in a mass grave.
Despite these exhaustive reports, many Israelis and their international supporters called the Hind Rajab story a fabrication, pointing to discrepancies in reporting about the child's age and other ultimately inconsequential details. Many media outlets, including Common Dreams, initially reported that Rajab was 6 years old. Some supporters of Israel denied that Hind Rajab ever existed; others claimed she was killed by Hamas.
"We know who killed Hind. We know the responsibility of the 401st Armoured Brigade under Beni Aharon, the 52nd Battalion commanded by Daniel Ella, and the Vampire Empire Company commanded by Sean Glass," HRF director general Dyab Abou Jahjah said Wednesday. "These people should be behind bars."
However, he added that “we have no trust whatsoever in the Israeli judicial system. This is a charade aimed at whitewashing and exonerating the criminals who killed Hind Rajab and her family."
"We believe justice will be served, but not by a system responsible for justifying crimes committed during the genocide," Jahjah added. "Justice will be served through international justice, through the ICC, and through national jurisdictions abroad. HRF will continue on this path, and we will not be fooled by these maneuvers.”
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Leaked GOP Memo Warns Big Tech That AI Data Centers as Popular as 'Nuclear Waste'
"If voters' perceptions of data centers are not fixed quickly, the campaign against them will expand far beyond Ohio."
Aug 19, 2026
A leaked memo written by the National Republican Senatorial Committee is warning Silicon Valley that its artificial intelligence data firms are becoming a massive political liability.
Axios reported on Wednesday that the GOP memo centers on the US Senate race in Ohio, where former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown has made opposition to data centers central to his campaign against incumbent Republican Sen. Jon Husted.
The memo argues that if Brown's campaign is successful in a state that President Donald Trump won by double digits in 2024, it will send a signal that support for data centers is a losing position across the US.
"If he loses and data centers get the blame, politicians across the country will take notice—and they will not go near the next one," the memo says. "This has become a sleeper issue for the entire election cycle."
The memo goes on to argue that the tech industry needs to do more to show Americans the benefits they will get from data centers, which have been criticized for raising people's utility bills and generating large amounts of pollution.
"If voters' perceptions of data centers are not fixed quickly," the memo cautions, "the campaign against them will expand far beyond Ohio."
According to Axios, AI CEOs and GOP insiders have become unnerved by internal polls showing that "data centers are as popular as spent nuclear waste, and more broadly have become a proxy for feelings about AI."
A poll released in June by Echelon Insights found that only 27% of Americans said they would want an AI data center built in their nieghborhood, with 62% opposed. This made data centers even less popular than nuclear power plants, which 34% of Americans said they would welcome in their neighborhoods.
A separate Axios report published Wednesday described AI CEOs being in "full panic mode" over the backlash to data centers. What's more, reported Axios, tech insiders privately acknowledge that "they can't find a compelling message to shift opinion fast enough" ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
In fact, noted Axios, Wisconsin Republican gubernatorial nominee Tom Tiffany has even come out against AI data center construction in his state, which the report described as "a striking crack" in President Donald Trump's "pro-AI coalition."
In a Wednesday social media post, pollster Adam Carlson predicted that any Big Tech public relations campaign to change Americans' minds about data centers was likely doomed.
"Charm offensives from tech firms... would’ve been more effective if they did them proactively instead of in response to (very predictable) local backlash," Carlson explained. "They got greedy. Now they’re trying to play catch-up and it's probably too late. No one to blame but themselves."
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Bolivia Arrests 'MAGA's Man in LatAm' for Attempted Assassination
Bolivian Vice President Edmand Lara said the attack "threatens life, democracy, and freedom of expression."
Aug 19, 2026
Fernando Cerimedo, an Argentine political operative who has worked on right-wing campaigns across Latin America, was arrested in Bolivia this week in connection with the attempted murder of a woman with whom he reportedly had a romantic relationship.
Cerimedo was arrested Tuesday morning at Viru Viru Airport after an attack on Bolivian lawyer and activist Nadia Beller.
Video footage circulating online shows two people dressed as delivery workers approaching Beller outside of a hotel in Santa Cruz de la Sierra and shooting her at close range. The 33-year-old was taken to a hospital and survived.
Cerimedo has connections to Argentina's President Javier Milei, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, and Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz.
As Drop Site News pointed out, he is business partners with President Donald Trump's former campaign manager Brad Parscale, and The Economist has called him "MAGA's man in LatAm" for "forging close ties" to the US leader's right-wing movement.
The 42-year-old operative is "credited with helping secure the US president's endorsement of the right-wing Nasry 'Tito' Asfura, who won Honduras' presidential election in December," The Guardian noted Wednesday.
The newspaper also reported that "Cerimedo's lawyer, Ernesto Giraldes, said his client had not been... trying to flee to Argentina and had traveled to Santa Cruz de la Sierra specifically to visit Beller in hospital, and denied he was behind the attack."
According to Al Jazeera, "Beller, who was four weeks pregnant, believes she was targeted for her opposition to a pack of unconstitutional laws under Decree 5503, which were being prepared by Cerimedo and the government, and for witnessing high-level corruption."
As the outlet detailed:
Decree 5503 introduces radical economic reforms, such as eliminating state fuel subsidies, that target policies put in place under Bolivia's former socialist government.
Beller is also understood to have had a romantic relationship with Cerimedo. She admitted to her relationship with him in a video appearance from her hospital bed, and highlighted Cerimedo's significant political influence.
She said she decided to speak out as she believes that "until I speak directly to the Bolivian people, they are going to finish what they attempted to do. They are going to end up taking my life."
The arrest is not the first time Cerimedo has attracted negative attention in Bolivia. Reuters reported that "in May, the vice presidency accused him of interfering in the country's internal affairs over a social media post, an allegation he denied," and last month, "Cerimedo said on X that he was being wrongfully accused on the internet of domestic violence."
Bolivian Vice President Edmand Lara said that the attack on Beller "threatens life, democracy, and freedom of expression," while the president, Paz, wrote in Spanish on X that "acts of violence are reaching unprecedented extremes, with repercussions at both national and international levels. As president and on behalf of the government, we are deeply dismayed by these events and are calling for cooperation at all levels—both national and international—to address this situation."
"I wish to express my solidarity with Ms. Nadia Beller regarding these events," he said. "I have instructed the relevant authorities to conduct a thorough, transparent, and exhaustive investigation until the facts are fully clarified. Ms. Beller must be provided with all necessary security and guarantees, as must the investigation itself, which must be conducted with absolute transparency and independence. The truth must come above all else so that justice prevails and is served—without exceptions and regardless of the circumstances."
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Drone Attacks Drove Record-Breaking Violence Against Aid Workers in 2025: UN
A majority of aid workers who were killed last year died in attacks in Gaza, despite a ceasefire that was reached last October.
Aug 19, 2026
"The technology may change, but the laws of war do not," said the United Nations' top humanitarian official on Wednesday as the international community marked World Humanitarian Day—and a record number of violent attacks against aid workers in 2025, with the expanded use of drones partially driving the increased threat to workers' safety.
According to the Aid Worker Security Database and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 907 aid workers were killed, injured, or kidnapped last year.
Nearly 300 more were detained or arrested, said OCHA.
The number of humanitarians who were killed dropped slightly from the previous year, down to 350 from 387. But the death toll was the second highest ever recorded, and a majority of those killed—186—were attacked in Gaza, despite a "ceasefire" agreement that was reached last October.
More than two-thirds of those killed in Gaza were victims of aerial bombardment.
OCHA noted that "cheap and adaptable armed drones are putting lethal capabilities into more hands," with armies now able to wage more explosive attacks from afar and reach "deeper into towns and cities."
The prevalence of armed drones has been linked to 80% of civilian deaths in Sudan in the first four months of this year, while in Colombia, weaponized drone attacks quadrupled between 2024-25.
As the technology of war changes, said OCHA, "our humanity must not... Civilians, including humanitarians, must be protected."
One aid worker was killed in March in the Democratic Republic of Congo when a drone struck a residential building, while four humanitarian convoys were attacked by drones in a single week in May in Ukraine.
"Weaponized drones have become the new face of an old danger: the deliberate or reckless destruction of civilian life,” said Tom Fletcher, the UN humanitarian chief.
“But just calling it out will not protect the next aid worker," Fletcher added. "States must uphold international humanitarian law and use every tool to protect civilians and our colleagues. And for those who break the rules, there must be real consequences."
So far in 2026, 82 aid workers have already been killed, while 322 have been injured and 235 have been kidnapped.
"On World Humanitarian Day, we honor humanitarian workers everywhere, and the courage and sacrifices they make every day to help others," said the global humanitarian group Oxfam. "We stand in solidarity with our staff and partners on the frontlines, often working at immense personal risk, and urge governments to uphold their obligations to protect them."
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Trump’s National Guard in DC Costs Millions Each Day, But Hardly Ever Stops Crime
Though National Guard troops now outnumber police officers in the capital, Reuters found they’ve been involved in just over 1% of criminal cases in the city, and most of them have been for minor offenses.
Aug 19, 2026
It's been about a year since President Donald Trump began his military occupation of Washington, DC. But while costing taxpayers millions of dollars per day, a new investigation reveals that his National Guard deployments have done almost nothing to stop violent crime.
Crime in DC was already at its lowest level in decades when Trump sent in the troops last August, as was the case in many of the cities that came under unprecedented federal occupation.
But while Trump claimed that these soldiers—who can only detain suspects but must call police officers to make arrests—were the only force capable of saving DC from "crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor," a Reuters investigation out Wednesday found that they’ve had a role in responding to only a tiny fraction of criminal cases.
Since their arrival last August, National Guard members have been mentioned in only about 1.3% of the criminal cases filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, which handles nearly all the city's criminal prosecutions.
And though Trump has repeatedly credited his troops with protecting residents from being murdered and mugged, charging documents show that his soldiers "mostly responded to minor incidents in neighborhoods that are wealthier, whiter, and less dangerous than the rest of the capital."
Many of the cases where troops intervened, Reuters found, were to stop offenses like subway fare evasion and shoplifting.
Reuters said it "could find no reference in court records to soldiers doing any kind of law enforcement in the neighborhoods where about 82% of the city’s 859 murders occurred over the past five years."
The investigation describes a pattern of soldiers simply standing around while crimes occurred and waiting for police to arrive. In one instance, police officers arrived to arrest a man stomping on a woman outside a nightclub.
According to one of the officers who responded to the scene, "There was approximately 15 National Guard members in the area on routine patrol who did not take any action.”
In another case, soldiers called emergency services after finding a man who'd been stabbed in an upscale waterfront area. But believing him to have only been intoxicated, they left him lying on the ground without performing emergency measures.
They only realized once the police arrived that he'd been "stabbed so severely his intestines were spilling out." He died two hours later after being brought to the hospital.
The administration has portrayed the mere presence of troops as a "deterrent" against crime. But violent crime in the city has actually risen slightly in the year since they arrived. Data from the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) shows 1,712 violent crimes in 2026 versus 1,645 at the same point in 2025—a 4% increase.
Meanwhile, the grassroots group Free DC has been documenting hostile encounters between guard troops and city residents. The group has cataloged several instances in which troops have detained people, including those protesting their presence, with what it says was “absolutely no cause.”
"They harass people a lot more than they are actually doing police work,” said the Rev. Norman Nixon, the pastor of the Union Temple Baptist Church, who spoke with Reuters.
DC now has over 4,500 troops patrolling the streets. Despite lacking the ability to perform many ordinary police functions, they now outnumber the city’s police force, and maintaining the National Guard's presence is costing more each day.
According to a report from the nonpartisan Niskanen Center, a deployed Guard member costs around $607 per day, compared with about $384 for an MPD officer. The Trump administration has estimated that keeping the Guard deployed until the end of Trump's term in 2029 will cost about $1.4 billion.
The troops also played a role in the administration’s campaign to remove homeless people from DC and help federal agents dismantle encampments last summer as part of what Trump described as a war against “vagrancy.”
Last year, researcher Hanna Homestead of the National Priorities Project estimated that the deployments, which then cost an estimated $1.1 million per day, was costing four times as much as it would to provide an affordable housing unit for every homeless person in the city, which was pegged at about $257,000 per day.
The Defense Department has since estimated that the cost of the deployments was nearly $1.7 million per day. But that was before the number of troops doubled.
Applying Homestead's methodology today would mean that deploying the National Guard is now nearly 9-10 times as costly as providing housing for the Washington, DC's homeless population, all while providing little apparent benefit to public safety.
"I can think of many other ways that federal resources could have been invested to make the nation’s capital safer," said Clinique Chapman, the CEO of the DC Justice Lab, in a letter to the editor of the Washington Post earlier this summer.
“For what it costs to deploy the Guard in [the] US for just six days,” Chapman said, taxpayers could have instead paid for the annual cost of running trauma recovery centers in each ward to help crime survivors heal and connect them to treatment and support.
For five days of the expenditure, the US could fund a mental health crisis response program like Denver's, which responds to hundreds of calls for service each month and reduces arrests, for one year.
For 41 days of what the National Guard deployment costs, the District could fund a year of living-wage jobs and pay the rent on a one-bedroom unit for every US resident returning home from the Bureau of Prisons.
ACLU-DC executive director Monica Hopkins emphasized that the point of the deployments was never to improve the lives of DC residents or enhance public safety, but a “political prop.”
"The Pentagon’s acknowledgment that the deployment will continue until 2029 confirms what we’ve said all along—there is no real emergency here," she said in a statement to mark the one-year anniversary of the deployment. "As was true one year ago, armed military troops are not needed and are not wanted on our streets."
"Because the nation's capital is not legally recognized as a state, extremist politicians have used DC as a testing ground for anti-democratic orders," she added. "We cannot let military deployment on the streets of the United States become normal or acceptable as a part of daily life here or anywhere else."
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ICC Denounces US Sanctions as ‘Flagrant Attack’ on International Legal Order
"When judicial actors are threatened for applying the law, it is the international legal order itself that is placed at risk."
Aug 19, 2026
The International Criminal Court on Wednesday hit back at the Trump administration one day after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced new sanctions against ICC officials.
The ICC described the new sanctions, which target President Tomoko Akane and senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Saye, as "a flagrant attack against the independence of an impartial judicial institution."
"When judicial actors are threatened for applying the law, it is the international legal order itself that is placed at risk," the ICC said. "Threats and coercive measures also impact the ability of victims to seek justice, as they turn to the court when all other avenues have been exhausted."
However, the court said that it is "undeterred" from pursuing its mission, while pledging to stand "firmly behind its personnel and behind victims of unimaginable atrocities."
In total, the US has now sanctioned half of the ICC's 18 judges, as well as both of the court's deputy prosecutors, a former prosecutor, and a staff member.
The sanctions on the ICC also drew condemnation from the government of the Netherlands, where the court is physically located.
In a social media post, Dutch Foreign Minister Tom Berendsen insisted that "international courts and tribunals must be able to freely carry out their mandates," and pledged to "fully support the court and its staff."
Balkees Jarrah, the Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said the sanctions were "just the latest example of the Trump administration’s utter contempt for international law and a naked attempt to shield American and Israeli officials implicated in serious crimes from justice."
Although no American is currently under investigation or being tried by the ICC, the Trump administration has been targeting ICC officials who have been investigating alleged war crimes committed by Israel with the backing of the US government.
Saye, a target of Tuesday's US sanctions, was charged with investigating war crimes allegedly committed by Israel during its yearslong assault on Gaza.
The Trump administration also sanctioned then-ICC prosecutor Karim Khan, who obtained arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, last year.
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'The Fight Has Just Begun': Angie Nixon Delivers Shocking Upset Win in Florida
“I don’t care about corporations’ bottom lines. I care about people."
Aug 19, 2026
In a surprise upset described variously as "stunning" and "a shocker" in headlines, State Rep. Angie Nixon won the Democratic primary for the open US Senate seat in Florida on Tuesday, defeating Lt. Col. Alex Vindman, the former national security official who many presumed would sail to victory with the support of the party establishment and a massive cash advantage.
Nixon, a former union organizer and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, will now face Sen. Ashley Moody, whom Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed to the seat after former Sen. Marco Rubio became Secretary of State, in the general election.
In her victory speech, Nixon said the win "showed the world what organized people can accomplish," and vowed to continue her surprise run by defeating Moody, the heavy favorite in a state dominated by Republicans over recent years, in the general election.
“I don’t know about you but I was taught to love my neighbors… They call me extreme but these things are not radical. They are not extreme… So Ashley Moody can call us whatever she wants. But in November she will call me Senator.”
— Progressive Angie Nixon, after pulling off a… pic.twitter.com/kXIq15uCMA
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) August 19, 2026
Outspent by Vindman by an estimated 13-to-1 advantage—raising just $975,000 overall compared to the more than $16 million he had on hand—Nixon was credited with channeling growing voter frustration with the Democratic Party elites who have failed to deliver for working people.
In a Monday night campaign interview on the eve of the election, Nixon told CNN that too many corporate establishment Democrats are standing in the way of real progress on key issues like healthcare as families struggle with an exploding cost of living.
“I don’t care about corporations’ bottom lines," Nixon said. "I care about people."
Angie Nixon said Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer should face scrutiny as too many “corporate-established Democrats” are beholden to companies rather than ordinary people. “I don’t care about corporations’ bottom lines; I care about people,” Nixon said.… pic.twitter.com/K9jfShul7g
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) August 19, 2026
Prominent national progressives championed Nixon's win.
"Democratic Socialist State Representative Angie Nixon, outspent more than 16 to 1, pulled off a HUGE upset to win the Democratic nomination for the US Senate in Florida," said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). "Congratulations, Angie!"
"Tonight Floridians sent a strong message that they need real progressive leadership to lower costs and protect our rights," declared Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.). "Congratulations on your primary victory, Angie Nixon; let's keep up the momentum and send her to Washington in November!"
Noting her strong support for Palestinian rights, the advocacy group Jewish Voice for Peace Action heralded the importance of Nixon's willingness to speak out against US complicity in Israeli abuses when too many in the Democratic Party have remained silent.
“The people are rising up against the political establishment that has failed them," said Stefanie Fox, the group's executive director. "The time is now for candidates like Nixon who champion working people and fight relentlessly to defend the rights of all people from Florida to Palestine."
Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, also celebrated Nixon's win.
“As an accomplished state representative and union organizer, Angie Nixon has dedicated herself to fighting for working families," said Martin. "AngiFloridians have chosen a proven leader with the experience and vision to lower costs, expand access to healthcare, make childcare and housing more affordable, fight for workers, protect public education, and deliver results for families across the Sunshine State. The DNC is ready to help elect Angie and work together to flip this seat, win the Senate majority, and deliver for all Floridians.”
While the celebrations poured in, Florida remains a deeply red state, and Nixon faces an incredibly tough uphill climb to defeat Moody in November.
In a social media post Tuesday night, Nixon told supporters: "We did it ya'll. Thank you to every person that put their heart into this campaign."
But "get ready," she added, "the fight has just begun."
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