The USA Potato

The best thing we saw today was Trump begging for help from NATO and European allies. The responses? Priceless. Thank you for making us smile.

The Israeli Defense Forces killed a Palestinian couple and two of their children in the West Bank on Sunday, on one of the deadliest days for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank in weeks. The soldiers opened fire on a car in the village of Tammun in which 37-year-old Ali Khaled Bani Odeh, his 35-year-old wife Waad, and their four sons Mohammad, Othman, Mustafa, and Khaled were traveling.

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President Donald Trump wondered if the U.S. “shouldn’t even be there” when answering questions about the war on Iran on Sunday, claiming that Iran’s military is already totally obliterated as the U.S. and Israel’s bombardments enter their third week with no end in sight. A reporter asked Trump on Sunday about his demands that other countries aid him in trying to force transit through the…

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Donald Trump painted his military campaign in Iran with the same gold shine as his plans for the new Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in remarks on Monday—but despite his assured posturing, he is asking for help.

The president’s comments came at a press conference prior to a Monday vote among Kennedy Center board members on whether to close the institution temporarily for repairs. Trump previously insisted the building was in disrepair and that its programming was “woke,” pushing Congress to appropriate $257 million via the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to fund renovations. 

In Iran, the president has created more serious problems. In the same Monday remarks, despite claiming that the US military had bombed Iran’s mine-laying ships to the extent that vessels could safely transit the Strait of Hormuz, an essential passageway in the Persian Gulf where roughly 20 percent of global crude oil and natural gas flows, Trump reiterated calls on allies to help reopen the shipping lane.

“Every one of [the mine-laying ships] is gone, but it only takes one,” Trump stated. “It’s a little unfair [given] you win a war.”

“You need people to watch and people to see,” he added.

On Monday, Trump said that some nations were “enthusiastic” to help. But that appears to be an overstatement, as many NATO countries have refused Trump’s request for naval and other military support. And on receiving a tepid response, Trump warned allies on Sunday about a “very bad” future if they did not help, and complained at his Monday press conference that the US was not receiving reimbursement for providing protection.

“This war has nothing to do with NATO,” Stefan Kornelius, a spokesperson for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, said on Monday. “NATO is a defensive alliance, an alliance for the defense of its territory.” 

As Trump’s military campaign in Iran enters its third week, US and Israeli strikes have killed over one thousand people in the country and led to bombings across the region. The White House seems to have no set goal—let alone a plan—despite costs now well into the tens of billions of dollars.

Israel announced on Monday that it is expanding its ground in southern Lebanon, claiming to target Hezbollah as Israel’s defense minister pledges that “hundreds of thousands” of people already forcibly displaced by Israeli attacks “will not return” for the indefinite future. In a statement, Israeli forces said that soldiers are carrying out “limited and targeted ground operations” in…

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The Pentagon handed Elon Musk’s xAI access to classified military networks.

An appeals court cleared the way for the Trump administration to continue deporting immigrants to third countries (not their home countries) while the case plays out. Third-country deportations are wrong.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca1.53896/gov.uscourts.ca1.53896.00108417272.0.pdf

As the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran extends into a third week, President Trump is demanding other countries send warships to the Strait of Hormuz, which has been largely shut, as oil prices keep rising. This comes as the U.S. and Israel continue to launch major strikes on Iran, while Iran has retaliated by repeatedly striking Israel and U.S. allies in the Gulf, including the United Arab Emirates…

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What do Yasser Arafat, Nelson Mandela, and Thomas Sankara have in common? The answer is simple: All three were intent on meeting with the leaders of the Iranian Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Khamenei. All three knew what it meant to liberate a people from colonialism; all three knew imperialism well; and all three recognized […]

The post Iran: A Colonial War of Reconquest first appeared on CovertAction Magazine.

Several allies to the U.S. have rebuffed President Donald Trump’s demands and threats this weekend for countries to aid in opening transit through the Strait of Hormuz, as oil prices spike in the third week of the U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran. As of Monday morning in the U.S., no countries had committed to aiding in Trump’s plan to form a naval coalition for access to the strait as Iranian…

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Reports from White House officials say Trump was hoping the Iran war would boost his approval ratings. It hasn’t worked. So now the administration has moved on to phase two is controlling what you see on TV.

Josué Aguilar Valle, a Honduran national, recalls the “terrible” conditions at the migrant jails where U.S. immigration authorities imprisoned him last year. In La Salle County, Texas, Aguilar shared a frigid cell with 50 men, sleeping on the concrete floor. “I thought I was going to experience hypothermia,” he explained. Aguilar’s wife struggled to locate him…

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US President Donald Trump late Sunday floated “treason” charges against media outlets that he accused of reporting false information about the Iran war as the human and economic costs of his illegal military assault continued to mount. In a tirade posted to his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote that media outlets he accused of circulating “fake news” should “be brought up on Charges for…

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At 15, with my skinny legs swinging off the exam table, I sat and listened as my gynecologist stood before me with serious eyes and told me that I had a high risk of developing cancer someday. It was a shocking message to get as a teenager; nonetheless, I made immediate decisions to protect myself. I stayed on birth control pills for years despite wild swings of emotion…

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Fascism depends on our compliance. Authoritarians know they cannot sustain rule by individually repressing each person in the country. They use threats and violence to inflict fear — a primary weapon to force compliance. If fear is their strategy for compliance, then we need a strategy for sustaining dissent. Amid Trump’s unjustified and illegal war on Iran, many of us need space to…

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A battle over a data center complex in rural Western New York may seem like a purely local affair. But an analysis of the project’s owner reveals ties that include the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, the government’s crackdown on U.S. campuses, and the imposition of neocolonial rule over Gaza. Over the past year, residents of Genesee County, New York — located between Buffalo and Rochester — have…

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Florida just handed Ron DeSantis a weapon to fire elected officials for supporting their own constituents.

War over already? 🙄 Trump doing his victory lap spin while the conflict is still actively raging.

State leaders and environmental advocates responded with outrage after the Trump administration on Friday ordered the restarting of a California pipeline that caused one of the largest oil spills in the state’s history, a move that comes as oil prices have skyrocketed following President Donald Trump’s launching of an illegal war against Iran and Iran’s subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

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The Trump administration stepped in to override California’s objections, ordering Sable Offshore to resume operations at its Santa Ynez Unit and pipeline system off the state’s coast but how did we get here?

In his top post at the Department of Homeland Security, David Harvilicz sets policy on protecting the nation’s elections infrastructure, including voting machines. He’s also the co-founder of a company with James Penrose, who helped hatch debunked conspiracy theories blaming hacked voting machines for Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election. Penrose assisted in a push to seize…

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Reminder the Senate is expected to vote on the Save America Act this week. Please contact your senator and urge them to vote no. You may be seeing a lot of apparent “support” for the bill on social media, but it is not organic. Bot accounts have been flooding senators pages urging them to vote yes.

Yes! 💯

It was a sweltering January afternoon in the Amazonian town of Puyo when Andrés Tapia realized his daughter’s public school fees were due. Like many Ecuadorians, he reached for his phone to make a mobile transfer. Carrying cash is too risky these days. Ecuador is in the grip of an ongoing security crisis, with transnational criminal organizations spilling in from neighboring Colombia and…

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Since the end of World War II, almost every U.S. president has initiated a major military conflict without congressional approval. Donald Trump attempted to portray himself as a “peace president,” promising to end the U.S.’s endless wars and bring troops home from the Middle East and other parts of the globe. But he has proven to be even more trigger-happy than most of his predecessors.

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MINNEAPOLIS — Gabi has big brown eyes, pigtails, and a genetic condition that makes her bones brittle. They fracture easily, leaving the 2-year-old in such pain that her mother quit her job cleaning offices to stay home and cradle her in the one-bedroom apartment they share with six relatives. When federal immigration agents descended on their city, officers deported Gabi’s father and…

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Some Republican lawmakers have routinely proposed criminally prosecuting women for getting abortions since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, despite bipartisan condemnation and criticism from national anti-abortion organizations. These bills never made it to the finish line, but they keep circulating in legislatures across the country. So-called “abortion abolitionists” who…

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President Donald Trump is boasting about the economy one year into his term. He claims that inflation has been defeated, growth is unprecedented, incomes are rising, and his tariffs are generating hundreds of billions for the U.S. economy. This is all hogwash, according to progressive economist Gerald Epstein, a leading global authority on macroeconomic policy and finance.

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The level of incompetence in this administration is staggering.

Friends,

The Epstein files continue to wreak havoc among America’s (and the United Kingdom’s) wealthy elites — this week resulting in even more resignations (and, in the U.K., arrests).

The havoc seems to be getting closer to Trump. According to an analysis by The New York Times, the files fail to include key materials about a woman who in 2019 accused both Epstein and Trump of sexual assault when she was a minor. The FBI conducted four interviews in connection with her claims and wrote summaries of each, but the Justice Department released only the one describing her accusations against Epstein. The other three are missing, as are interview notes, although the department released notes of FBI interviews with other potential witnesses and victims.

This is eerily similar to Watergate. As a friend put it, the dam is leaking more every day, the shingles are dropping off the roof one by one, and there are even (gasp!) members of the president’s own party who want more disclosure. Somebody — like the fall guy who wrote the letter to Judge Sirica, or Alexander Butterfield, who told about the tapes, after saying, “Oh, I wish you hadn’t asked that question!” — is going to blow the deadly whistle. Maybe it’s the woman who accused Trump in 2019. When Trump says, “It’s time to move on from the Epstein files,” you gotta feel the ghost of Richard Nixon in the room.

Hence, today’s Office Hours question: Is the Epstein scandal finally about to destroy Trump?

Here are the most thoughtful responses I get to this question right now:

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Dear readers,

We are happy you stayed with us for the year. Now, when trumpism got the coverage it deserves, we are closing this website as redundant.

You are invited to subscribe to our source feeds directly (they all have RSS feeds, which is the second best thing after fediverse).

Keep calm and carry on!

Yours truly

The Justice Department has filed lawsuits against Kentucky, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Utah, and West Virginia seeking access to their complete voter registration lists.

A big thank you to Anthropic!

After a weeks-long standoff between the Defense Department and AI firm Anthropic over how the military can deploy its technology, CEO Dario Amodei said tonight that the company will not loosen its usage policies.
https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war

Allies of the Trump administration are reportedly circulating a document that they say would grant the president sweeping powers over elections, including the ability to ban mail-in ballots, by declaring a national emergency over disproven allegations of interference by China in the 2020 election, a new Washington Post report finds. Right-wing activists who claim to be in contact with the…

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A Columbia University student was reportedly taken by federal immigration agents who lied in order to gain entry into her residence, the university’s president said in a statement on the Thursday morning arrest, which critics have described as an abduction. The detained student has been identified as Ellie Aghayeva, an undergrad majoring in neuroscience and political science.

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As Democratic leaders coalesce behind reforms for Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents without demands for funding cuts, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) introduced legislation on Friday to slash the entirety of the GOP’s massive ICE budget increase and funnel the money toward undoing Medicaid cuts. The entire Democratic caucus, as well as two Republicans, voted “yes” for the amendment.

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And here we go again. Some federal employees are starting to receive furlough notices as lawmakers in Washington weigh how to end the partial government shutdown that began over the weekend.

A sweeping proposal by the Trump administration to expand offshore oil and gas drilling could result in more than 4,000 oil spills in U.S. waters, according to a new analysis by the Center for Biological Diversity. Trump’s draft proposal, announced last November, would authorize up to 34 offshore oil and gas lease sales over the next five years. That would open as much as 1.27…

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What does it mean for humanity if cutting-edge AI weapons development for the Pentagon is being significantly funded by venture capitalists who are also profiting from the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people? Consider, for example, the X-BAT. On October 21, 2025, in a theatrical unveiling involving a darkened auditorium, a smoke machine, and a black silken shroud that was…

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Two detainees at the nation’s only current immigrant family detention center, 70 miles south of San Antonio, have “active measles infections,” federal and state officials said. Federal officials halted “all movement” and quarantined some migrants, said Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, in a statement. The measles cases were first confirmed Saturday…

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Since the beginning of the Israeli genocide and the imposition of a total blockade on the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, water desalination plants have almost completely shut down due to severe fuel shortages. According to Gaza’s Government Media Office, more than 90 percent of water and desalination facilities have gone out of service. As infrastructure systems collapse…

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Days after the FBI seized 700 boxes of ballots and voting records from the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia, President Trump called on Republicans “to take over the voting in at least 15 places” in advance of the next election, raising new fears that his administration plans to interfere in the midterms and beyond.

“Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” Trump told former deputy FBI director and conservative commentator Dan Bongino on his radio show on Monday. “We have states that I won that show I didn’t win. Now you’re going to see something in Georgia where they were able to get, with a court order, the ballots. You’re going to see some interesting things come out.”

Trump is once again saying the quiet part out loud, suggesting that the FBI raid in Georgia was a prelude to how his administration intends to interfere in state and local election processes in advance of the midterms.

There are still many unanswered questions about the Georgia raid, such as why a criminal investigation has been opened into an election that took place six years ago and was audited three times and why Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was present for the operation when she is barred by law from participating in domestic law enforcement operations. The New York Times reported on Monday that Gabbard called Trump and put him on speakerphone with FBI agents who took part in the raid, which represents yet another erosion of democratic norms.

I wrote last week that “the raid was as much about the next election as the one six years ago.” Trump confirmed that on Monday, making clear that his administration’s end goal is to seize control of election administration at the state and local level to prevent his party from losing power.

As Trump and the GOP became more unpopular, the tactics they’ll use to attempt to remain in control are sure to become more radical and extreme.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York) said on Sunday that one of his most important jobs as Senate minority leader is to “fight for aid to Israel,” as the Trump administration’s masked federal agents continue their deadly raids of the U.S. with little to no pushback from Democrats. In remarks at a breakfast gathering of Jewish leaders in New York City, Schumer said, “I have many jobs as leader …

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