“Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, an ally of President Donal Trump, has added two organizations to his state’s list of terrorist organizations—an action taken without any safeguards and which deprives the organizations of the right to buy land in the state.
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You don’t have to like the Muslim Brotherhood or the Council on American-Islamic Relations to think the government should be required to prove accusations before punishing people.”
“While the renewed congressional interest in the legal and moral justification for Trump’s bloodthirsty anti-drug strategy is welcome, that inquiry should not be limited to the question of whether one particular attack violated the law of war.
The details of Bradley’s defense nevertheless illustrate the outrageous implications of conflating drug smuggling with violent aggression. He argues that the seemingly helpless men in the water, who were blown apart by a second missile while clinging to the boat’s smoldering wreckage, still posed a threat because they could have recovered and delivered whatever cocaine might have remained after the first strike.
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In reality, there was no “fight” to stay in. The violence exemplified by this attack is so one-sided that the government’s lawyers claim blowing up drug boats does not constitute “hostilities” under the War Powers Resolution because U.S. personnel face no plausible risk of casualties. So we are talking about an “armed conflict” that does not involve “hostilities” yet somehow does involve enemy “combatants”—who, contrary to that label, are not actually engaged in combat.
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Bradley seems to have determined that the flailing men were engaged in a “hostile act” simply by existing near a boat remnant that might have contained salvageable cocaine. As ridiculous as that position is, it is only a bit more risible than Trump’s assertion that supplying cocaine to Americans amounts to “an armed attack against the United States” that justifies a lethal military response.
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“There is a risk that the focus on the second strike and specifically the talk of ‘war crimes’ feeds into the administration’s false wartime framing and veils the fact that the entire boat-strikes campaign is murder, full stop,” Cardozo School of Law professor Rebecca Ingber, an expert on the law of war, told The New York Times. “The administration’s evolving justification for the second strike only lays bare the absurdity of their legal claims for the campaign as a whole—that transporting drugs is somehow the equivalent of wartime hostilities.””
“The fee will affect workers in fields far beyond tech. Health care providers, religious groups, and educators are among those suing the Trump administration over the fee, “saying it would harm hospitals, churches, schools and industries that rely on the visa,” reports the Associated Press. The fee could exacerbate teacher and physician shortages, especially in rural areas that struggle to attract American workers. “About a third of H-1B workers are nurses, teachers, physicians, scholars, priests and pastors, according to the lawsuit,” according to the Associated Press.
Though the Trump administration argues that its visa fee will address the “large-scale replacement of American workers,” it might not lead to companies hiring American workers instead of foreign workers after all. “Firms respond to restrictions on H-1B immigration by increasing foreign affiliate employment,” found a 2020 National Bureau of Economic Research working paper. “For every visa rejection,” the average multinational corporation hires 0.4 employees overseas, while the most globalized firms “hire 0.9 employees abroad for every visa rejection.” Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond economist Nicolas Morales observed that “tighter immigration rules don’t just limit U.S. hiring, but they can also accelerate relocating jobs to other countries.”
Other countries are trying to attract foreign talent that might be deterred by U.S. visa policies, Roll Call reported in October. Germany’s ambassador to India and Bhutan compared the country’s immigration policy to a German car: “It’s reliable, it’s modern and it is predictable….We do not change our rules fundamentally overnight.” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney argued that “not as many people are going to get visas to the United States,” which represents “an opportunity for Canada.”
The H-1B program is imperfect. Many supporters of high-skilled immigration suggest fundamentally changing the visa or scrapping it altogether, arguing that it limits foreign workers’ mobility and long-term prospects and doesn’t prioritize the highest-skilled workers for the U.S. economy. But a $100,000 fee won’t fix those issues.”
Trump’s FEMA is denying more disaster recovery requests. It seems blue states are having more trouble than red states. Trump has used FEMA aid to threaten states about immigration enforcement. The administration says states should shoulder more of the burden of disaster recovery.
Trump has put former directors of a chemical industry group in charge of regulating chemicals. They have chosen to loosen regulations, saying that workers can protect themselves by wearing the appropriate gear.
“These bogus numbers would be merely amusing if Trump were not deploying them to justify a policy of killing suspected cocaine couriers, at a distance and in cold blood, without legal authorization or any semblance of due process.”
“calling a drug smuggler a combatant does not make him a combatant. That reality goes to the heart of the morally and legally bankrupt justification for President Donald Trump’s bloodthirsty anti-drug campaign in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, which began on September 2 and so far has killed 87 people in 22 attacks.
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Trump conflates drug smuggling with violent aggression, saying it amounts to “an armed attack against the United States” that requires a lethal military response. According to that counterintuitive theory, suspected cocaine smugglers are “combatants” who can be killed at will, and their vessels pose a “threat” to national security that can be neutralized only by completely destroying them.
In reality, Americans want cocaine, and criminal organizations are happy to supply it. The government does not approve of that trade, which it has long sought to suppress by interdicting cocaine and arresting smugglers.”
“American farmers exported more than 26 million metric tons of soybeans to China annually during Biden’s term. Trump’s deal with China would cover less than half that amount
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Since 2017, America has exported more than 22 million metric tons of soybeans to China in every year except two. Those years? The first was 2018, when China cut off purchases of American soybeans in response to Trump’s tariffs targeting American imports of Chinese goods. The second was this year, when China did the same thing in response to another set of tariffs imposed by the Trump administration.”
Estimates on who is paying for tariffs so far break down like this: 4% paid for by foreigners; 70% paid for by importing companies; 26% paid for by American consumers.
In the first half of 2024, the Trump Organization had an income of 51 million. In the first half of 2025, that number was 864 million. What big new product storming the world did the Trump Organization come out with? That’s a 1,600% increase!