This is a doctor working in Gaza. He describes the conditions. The Israelis are sniping World Health doctors. Israelis are moving the “yellow line” that they are claiming is the new boundary line between Israel and Palestinians. They are slowly moving the line deeper ad deeper into Gaza. The Israeli snipers were shooting the young boys in different areas on different days, now they are using drones to fire on young children alone with horrific results. Remember from the last clip he was saying how Israel is blocking and destroying the medical supplies and equipment. Israel is deliberately shooting and killing children. They want the chaos it causes, they like the fear it promotes, and they like that no new generations of Palestinians are growing. The doctor spoke of other atrocities that Israel is inflicting daily on the Palestinians. Israel is a criminal nation doing a genocide, and much of our democratic leadership is deeply in the pockets of AIPAC. Notice that Hakeem Jeffries was also at the same event. People here have asked why I am so anti-democratic leadership; this is one of the reasons why. They are beholden to the big money donors and lobbies doing their bidding while ignoring the desires and will of the people they are supposed to represent, not rule over. Hugs
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has emphasized his commitment to maintaining pro-Israel sentiments within the Democratic Party. In recent statements, Schumer articulated that his role is to ensure that the left remains supportive of Israel, a position he conveyed during an interview with The New York Times. This assertion reflects a broader concern regarding the changing dynamics of the Democratic Party’s support for Israel and Jewish causes. Schumer’s comments have sparked discussions about the implications of this shift, particularly in light of the party’s historical alignment with pro-Israel policies. Opinion pieces have noted that Schumer views the preservation of American institutions as integral to protecting religious minorities, highlighting the intersection of Jewish identity and political advocacy. https://deepnewz.com/middle-east/chuck-schumer-emphasizes-role-keeping-left-pro-israel-says-job-to-keep-the-left-f0ff217c
“I have many jobs as [Senate] leader… and one is to fight for aid to Israel — all the aid that Israel needs,” Schumer said at a gathering of Jewish leaders and community members in New York on Sunday.
“I will continue to fight for it.,” Schumer continued. “We delivered more security assistance to Israel, our ally, than ever, ever before.”
According to Jacob Kornbluh, who provided footage of the remarks while reporting for The Forward, Schumer told the audience that his support for Jewish security funding will only continue growing under his leadership, calling it his “baby.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/schumer-israel-aid
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.
Dr. Tarek Loubani, a Canadian emergency room physician who has been volunteering in Palestine joins the program from Gaza for a harrowing interview. If you can, please support Dr. Loubani’s Glia Project, a medical solidarity organization that empowers low-resource communities to build sustainable, locally-drive healthcare projects.
WASHINGTON, DC – NOVEMBER 07: U.S. President Donald Trump (L) welcomes Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orban as he arrives at the White House on November 07, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump and Orban are holding a bilateral lunch today and are expected to discuss trade and energy. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
It’s the Corruption, Stupid
In the aftermath of Viktor Orbán’s defeat in Hungary, a typically shallow conventional wisdom has already emerged that unless President Trump gets the economy turned around, Republicans are going to have hell to pay in the 2026 and 2028 elections.
The NYT quotes the right-wing commentator Rod Dreher, who decamped to Hungary to work for an Orbán-funded think tank, as explaining the election result thusly: “When all boats aren’t rising, everybody looks at who’s on the yacht. In terms of MAGA, populism is great, but if you can’t deliver on the economy, none of it is going to matter.”
That is abundantly true and yet terribly misleading because the economic mess we’re in is entirely of Trump’s own doing. He’s not the usual American president held hostage to the vagaries and cycles of an economy largely beyond his control.
In historic fashion, Trump has torpedoed key pillars of the global economy by launching unprecedented trade wars and an unjustified elective war in the Middle East that has bottled up world oil supplies to such an extent that it threatens a recession. At home, he has dramatically throttled back the economic engine of immigration, targeted America’s world leading universities, and decimated its vibrant scientific and biomedical research base.
Except for the racist assault on immigrants, all of these moves are not driven by ideological imperatives but by corrupt impulses. The economic damage Trump has done was crafted purposely to create opportunities for self-enrichment for him and his allies. It generates its own currency which can be used to perpetuate his political power. What he dispenses he can take away.
The family real estate business is undergoing the fastest overseas expansion since its founding a century ago, each deal potentially shaping everything from tariffs to military aid.
Led by Eric, and his brother, Donald Jr., the family business has expanded into cryptocurrencies with ventures that brought in billions of dollars but raised questions about whether some big investors received favorable treatment in return.
The brothers have also joined or invested in a number of companies that aim to do business with the government their father runs. Last month, they struck a deal giving them stakes worth millions in an armed drone maker seeking contracts with the Pentagon and with Gulf states under attack by Iran and dependent on the U.S. military led by their father.
It always sounds a bit earnest to deplore corruption, but one of the practical reasons for eschewing corruption is because at best it acts like an invisible tax on economic growth. At worst, it corrodes the economic engine to the point that it doesn’t properly function any longer. Before Trump, the United States was a world leader in combatting corporate and political corruption abroad for the unapologetically realpolitik reason that American companies could win on a level playing field. Under Trump II, the DOJ has explicitly stopped enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and we’re now in a grubby race to the bottom.
Any notion that Trump can get the economy “back on track” or dampen the economic shockwaves he has unleashed ignores the substance of what he’s done. Not only are Trump’s second term attacks on economic growth hard to reverse, let alone quickly, they’re deeply wired into who he is and what he’s about.
The Economic Warning Signs
The Middle East conflict is causing oil scarcity and rising prices that are contributing to significant “demand destruction” which could lead to the steepest drop-off in demand for oil since the COVID slowdown, the International Energy Agency is forecasting in its latest outlook.
The International Monetary Fund warns that the Middle East conflict will slow economic growth, fuel inflation and raises the possibility of a global recession.
Latest on the Middle East Conflict …
Israeli and Lebanese officials gathered in D.C. for rare direct talks — the first in a decade — as the Netanyahu government has seized on the wider conflict to advance Israel’s position on the ground in Lebanon.
Bitter irony alert: Talks between Iran and Trump administration are complicated by “the risk that any agreement that emerges may resemble the 2015 nuclear accord” that Trump abrogated in his first term, the NYT reports.
House Republicans have again abdicated their oversight roles by pushing off until at least May testimony originally scheduled for next week from senior Pentagon officials on the war in Iran.
Latest on the Middle East Conflict …
Israeli and Lebanese officials gathered in D.C. for rare direct talks — the first in a decade — as the Netanyahu government has seized on the wider conflict to advance Israel’s position on the ground in Lebanon.
Bitter irony alert: Talks between Iran and Trump administration are complicated by “the risk that any agreement that emerges may resemble the 2015 nuclear accord” that Trump abrogated in his first term, the NYT reports.
House Republicans have again abdicated their oversight roles by pushing off until at least May testimony originally scheduled for next week from senior Pentagon officials on the war in Iran.
Lawless Boat Strike Death Toll: 170
The U.S. attacked an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Eastern Pacific on Monday, bringing the campaign’s overall death toll to at least 170. In announcing the attack, the U.S. Southern Command introduced new Orwellian language: “Applying total systemic friction on the cartels.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is waging a pressure campaign against the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to squash a potential investigation into the boat strike campaign, The Intercept reports.
Must Read
TPM’s Josh Kovensky reports from Frisco, Texas, the country’s fastest growing city and a haven for South Asian immigrants, which far-right activists are seizing on as “proof” of the Great Replacement Theory.
Thread of the Day
Trump has cut legal immigration more than illegal immigration, as I predicted. While illegal entries have fallen, they continued a prior trend, falling more before he came back. Meanwhile, Trump has drastically cut legal entries, reversing the prior upward trend. http://www.cato.org/blog/trump-h…
Local authorities in St. Paul, Minnesota have launched a criminal investigation into the notorious ICE detention in January of Hmong American ChongLy “Scott” Thao. They’re investigating the warrantless raid on an American citizen’s home as a potential kidnapping, burglary, and false imprisonment.
American law is built on a simple rule: The government cannot get around legal limits by creating a new structure to do the same thing another way. The Posse Comitatus Act reflects that rule. It exists to prevent the federal government from using a large, armed force for general policing inside the U.S. But by tripling ICE’s size, giving it $75 billion in multi-year funding insulated from normal oversight, and deploying it far beyond immigration enforcement — from neighborhood operations to general airport security — the administration has achieved in practice what those restrictions were designed to prevent.
Swalwell and Gonzales Both Resign
In a rapid-fire combo of scandal-fueled resignations, Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and Tony Gonzales (R-TX) both announced last evening that they would resign their seats — though neither gave a date certain for their departures. Depending on the exact timing, the resignations should be a wash and not effect majority control of the House.
Two Big Wins
In the lawsuit over the removal of the Pride flag at the Stonewall National Monument, the Trump administration has reversed course and confirmed in a new filing that it will reinstate the flag and not remove it again.
The American Library Association and a union of cultural workers have reached a settlement in their lawsuit against the Trump administration that saves the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services, the NYT reports: “The Trump administration reaffirmed that it had reinstated all previously canceled grants, in keeping with a separate legal ruling last year, and reversed all staff reductions. It also promised not to take any further steps to reduce the agency.”
Good Read
Wired: Government Workers Say They’re Getting Inundated With Religion
Pope Making Everyone Look Dumb
The senior senator from Ohio:
Bernie Moreno on Trump’s comments about the Pope: “I was incensed to watch the Pope's comments. I think what the Pope is doing is a disgrace.”“It's a shame that the Pope has made the Catholic Church political. Thank God my mom’s not alive to watch that.”
Last year I posted about this, because of the consensus of attendees that they should prepare for war. Gee whiz they called that! A lot of people ignore this, because it’s all a buncha rich people who think they run the world. Well, it is a buncha rich people, and no doubt they do run some parts of the world, but all the wee little people all have free will, and they use it. Bilderberg prepares those with all the money for what appears will happen due to free will’s this, that, and the other thing. I don’t care who wore what, or even who was there, but the tiny things within the name-dropping matter; that tells us what they come away with as info for keeping their interests safe. So, in case I’m not the only one, here is this.
This year’s conference had plenty of newsworthy aspects, but it’s a mystery why the press fails to talk about it
The 72nd meeting of the Bilderberg group, the elite and secretive policy conference that is the longtime subject of endless conspiracy theories, was held at the weekend in Washington DC. A security cordon went up around the opulent Salamander hotel for the notoriously media-shy summit, which was packed as ever with prime ministers, military leaders, tech billionaires and the heads of giant investment companies.
Bilderberg, which since the 1950s has been the intellectual engine room of Nato, took place this year at a time of immense crisis and uncertainty for the alliance. In recent weeks, with Trump threatening at every turn to withdraw from the “paper tiger” of Nato, the “Trans-Atlantic Defence-Industrial Relationship” (as it’s called on the agenda) has reached a strained breaking point.
The head of Nato and Bilderberg regular Mark Rutte arrived at the conference fresh from a “very frank” conversation at the White House. But away from Trump’s bluster, and for all his rhetoric about abandoning Nato, there were no signs that the Americans are withdrawing from Bilderberg. Far from it – the Americans were there in force.
Wall Street titans, including the CEOs of KKR and Lazard, and the heads of huge corporations like Pfizer, met behind closed doors with a delegation of senior politicians close to the president. Big business lobbying in private is Bilderberg’s speciality, and this secretive mix of the private and public sectors fits perfectly with Trump’s brand of crony-capitalism.
Trump’s trusted secretary of the interior, Doug Burgum, was attending, alongside his favourite trade guru, Robert Lighthizer. They were joined by Trump’s economic ally Jason Smith, the chair of the influential House ways and means committee, and his secretary of the army, Dan Driscoll, known as Trump’s “drone guy”.
It was no surprise with the conflict in Iran dominating the global news cycle that this year’s conference had a wartime flavour: with the “Future of Warfare” on the agenda, and a participant list including the four-star admiral Samuel Paparo, head of the US Indo-Pacific Command. From the private sector there was a healthy contingent of military contractors and drone manufacturers, led by the Bilderberg insider Eric Schmidt, who’s the former head of Google and a keen evangelist for drone warfare.
Earlier this year, Schmidt told the FT that “future wars are going to be defined by unmanned weapons”, with “swarms of drones operated remotely and increasingly automated with AI targeting”. Thriving in this rich overlap between drones and AI are companies like Anduril Industries, whose co-founder and CEO, Brian Schimpf, is attending the Washington conference, alongside his collaborator in Trump’s “Golden Dome” project, Palantir’s CEO, Alex Karp.
Karp is close to fellow billionaire tech-bro Peter Thiel, whose name, remarkably, is absent from this year’s participant list. Thiel has been a member of the group’s steering committee since 2008, and it was unheard of for him to miss a Bilderberg. Thiel’s reach runs deep into the Trump administration, and his influence within Bilderberg has also been growing through the years. Through the American Friends of Bilderberg Inc, he largely funds the lavish Washington-based meetings, alongside fellow steering committee member and billionaire Schmidt.
Thiel operates in the powerful liminal area between big finance and big intelligence – most notably, he set up Palantir with the help of funding from the CIA. This shady intersection was the birthplace of Bilderberg, and is baked into its history: the group was set up by British and American intelligence, and there’s always a handful of spy chiefs at the conference. This year, three intelligence directors were present, including the head of MI6, Blaise Metreweli. It is a fascinating backstage world which Thiel will now miss along with the strategising, the talent spotting and the big ideological discussions on “China” and “the west”.
It was no small thing for the arch-networker Thiel to skip Bilderberg. After all, Bilderberg is all about the chance to stay three steps ahead with all that lovely, off-the-books access to policymakers such as breakfast with the president of Finland, tea with the head of the IMF, and cocktails with the King of Holland.
Quite why the press fails so spectacularly to talk about Bilderberg, such a major annual summit with so many senior politicians present, is an enduring mystery. This year’s conference had plenty of newsworthy aspects, not least the presence of Vivian Motzfeldt, the former Greenlandic foreign minister and ex-speaker of the Inatsisartut (Greenland’s parliament).
Motzfeldt was the first Greenlander to appear at Bilderberg, and her presence was a clear signal to the Trump administration that Greenland has powerful allies within the Trans-Atlantic partnership. Motzfeldt no doubt contributed to the session on “Arctic Security”, and might even have been moved to quote the final sentence of Trump’s recent anti-NATO vent: “REMEMBER GREENLAND, THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!”
But as there was no press oversight for this conference, it is something that we will probably never know.
We were told we couldn’t take a joke, and that social media isn’t real life. Now the misogyny of early chatrooms and Gamergate has reached the White House
Harrison Sullivan, known as HSTikkyTokky, in Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere. Photograph: Netflix/PA
Why has it taken so long for us to treat misogyny as a political problem? The modern manosphere has been metastasising for many years – and for years, mainstream culture has responded with a helpless shrug. There was nothing unusual about men hurting women, even if the technology was new.
In the early aughts, angry and alienated men began indulging in recreational misogyny online, bombarding women and girls in the public eye with threats, insults, harassment, hacking, and hideous “revenge porn”. Strange as it may now sound, though, “the internet” was still seen as separate from “real life”.
That, at least, was what I was told the first time I went to the police about the death threats I was receiving as a young columnist. Nothing could be done, because what happened on social media wasn’t real and didn’t count. If I didn’t like it I should get offline, and presumably continue my work via rotary phone and fax. Those of us who were early targets of what would become the manosphere did not have the luxury of ignoring the issue. For us, it was easy to see that this was something new and serious, easy to understand how the tactics used against us might be deployed elsewhere – and how quickly matters could escalate.
Which is what happened in 2014. In May of that year, the terrorist Elliot Rodger killed six people and brought global attention to “incels” – young men radicalised by sexual resentment.
Three months later came Gamergate, a global orgy of online harassment targeting women in the video game industry. It all started when up-and-coming game creator Zoe Quinn was attacked by a bitter ex-boyfriend in a book-length tirade of sexual and professional jealousy. The non-scandal became a lightning rod for tens of thousands of gamers furious that women were intruding on a medium that was meant to be their personal power fantasy.
On anonymous forums like 4chan, men coordinated an extraordinary campaign of abuse dressed up as concern for “journalistic ethics”. Quinn and other creators were driven from their homes, but the firestorm was already out of control. Over the next few years, as “incels” continued to carry out acts of mass murder, every entertainment industry, from comics and publishing to film and TV, was besieged by obsessive trolls casting themselves as brave rebels against illiberal “social justice warriors”. The more they got away with it, the more they treated it like a game.
Gamergate brought together the disparate strands of what we now call the manosphere: the grifting pickup-artists, the Christian nationalists, the bitter “incels” and the furious fans triggered into mass social vandalism whenever they heard a story they weren’t the hero of. This slurry of half-formed fixations congealed into a coherent ideology of aggrieved entitlement, with its own language – “escaping the matrix”, “taking the red pill” – and their own logic of heroic victimhood in the face of women’s sexual power. The rage and alienation of men abandoned by post-crash capitalism was channelled towards a common cause – one ripe for co-option by the worst possible actors.
Throughout the mid-aughts, mainstream media continued to underestimate the manosphere.The fringes of the right did not make the same mistake. Gamergate was the proving ground for some of the central propagandists of the new “alt-right”. Steve Bannon, the political svengali and co-founder of Breitbart News, saw the potential in this cohort of cranks. He went on to run Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign, helping to deliver that key demographic to a president who personified everything the new cult of male supremacy most admired, as he crowed about sexual violence and held the notionally free world hostage to his every emotional spasm.
In hindsight, it is startling that all of this was normalised for so long. It was apparentlyinconceivable that violence against women could constitute a crisis – unless, of course, the violence was blamed on immigrants or on transgender people, at which point women’s safety suddenly shot to the top of the political agenda. When feminists and others in the infected eye of the storm tried to raise the alarm, we were told we were exaggerating for attention, or that we couldn’t take a joke. Under the posturing,cartoon frogs and memespeak, these were lost young men who deserved patience and understanding, and if we didn’t offer it we were heartless, humourless killjoys.
Identical arguments were used to dismiss the rise of Maga until it was far too late. The playbook tested out on feminists and on Black, queer and female creators in the mid-aughts was replicated in far-right movements across the global north – as was the response of muted both-sidesism. Then as now, politicians, pundits and industry leaders officially disapproved of the worst excesses of the manosphere, but declined to take an explicit stand, terrified that any display of moral integrity would alienate their base.
As the 2010s turned into the 2020s and the manosphere continued to expand, funnelling its recruits towards ever more extreme, explicitly racist ideas, it became fashionable to cast “social justice warriors” as the pressing danger to human freedom. Politicians and public figures seemed far more concerned about the #MeToo movement, which seemed proof positive that feminists had gone too far – and deserved, perhaps, to be punished for it. After the third or fourth time a documentary crew came to interview me about all the death threats, I realised that they didn’t want to help – they wanted to watch.
Lots of people did. After Gamergate, bigotry became a growth industry for enterprising young lads unburdened by conscience. As a journalist, I interviewed many young far-right men who admitted that what they really wanted was to be influencers and film-makers. For clicks and views they courted controversy and flirted with the far right – but it didn’t take long for the relationship to get serious. As Kurt Vonnegut writes in his anti-fascist masterpiece Mother Night, “we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be”.
Today, nobody is pretending that this is a joke any more. Trump, in his deranged dotage, is openly courting the manosphere, and the young men of gen Z are veering towards the far right en masse. There’s a clear line from the social vandalism of Gamergate to the mega-grifting male supremacists, scamming their followers with the promise of a reality where women and girls are non-player characters, to be defeated, exploited or traded for tokens in a brutal marketplace of human value. Many young men have lived their entire lives in the shadow of this weaponised misogyny – and so have young women. And that sinister ideology is still gnawing at the heart of power.
A few weeks ago, in a break from encouraging his deranged president to take over Greenland, White House adviser Stephen Miller found time to post a tweet on X that appears to be mocking the new Star Trek series for being too diverse. Elon Musk emerged from his fug of racial conspiracy theories and transphobia to agree. This is embarrassing, and not just because any half-literate nerd knows that Star Trek has been woke since 1966. Because even after turning the world into their personal thunder dome, the representatives of aggrieved white male power are still unsatisfied, still demanding we cater to their every petty whim. They will continue to do so until the rest of us, at last, refuse to tolerate their nonsense.
Laurie Penny is a journalist, author and screenwriter. They write the substack Force of Culture
Dr. Tarek Loubani, a Canadian emergency room physician who has been volunteering in Palestine joins the program from Gaza for a harrowing interview. If you can, please support Dr. Loubani’s Glia Project, a medical solidarity organization that empowers low-resource communities to build sustainable, locally-drive healthcare project.
I had a few other ideas I could have gone with today, but I decided to put them aside and have a little fun with something I wrote a few days ago. I honestly didn’t expect to draw this cartoon the day that I wrote it, along with three other ideas, but as I showed each of those ideas to a couple of friends, it was the one that made them both laugh.
So I decided to take it easy today by drawing this, and I still ended up working until 6 PM on a Saturday. Basically, I feel like this is a cartoon I did not have to draw, but I just wanted to. If nothing else, I should get some satisfaction out of it because I always end up pissing off a MAGAt or two anytime I bring up the word taco.
Fine. I’ll come clean. The biggest reason I wanted to draw this cartoon was for the twist on the Jack in the Box car antenna.
I never thought anyone would put ketchup on a taco, but one of my friends told me some people do. And I thought putting ketchup on eggs was gross. Taco Bell doesn’t stock ketchup, do they? (snip-a bit MORE; click the title. Also I know a couple of people who put ketchup on their Mexican entrees, and yeesh.)
Melania Trump came out of nowhere yesterday to deliver a 6-minute address to let us know that she never had a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. OK, did somebody ask?
Delivering scripted remarks at a podium in the same room Donald Trump used to address the nation on the war in Iran last week, Melania declared that she “never had a relationship” with, or was ever one of the victims of the late pedophile Epstein she also claimed she never had a relationship with Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, despite there being an email between the two where Melania signed it with “love.”
“I have never been friends with Epstein,” she said in her statement. “I am not Epstein’s victim. Epstein did not introduce me to Donald Trump.”
She went on to say that she and Donald were invited to the same parties as Epstein “from time to time” as “overlapping in social circles is common in New York City and Palm Beach”. But she specifically denied that her emails to Maxwell were anything more than “casual correspondence.”
Melania claimed that she met Epstein for the first time in 2000, at a party she attended with Donald. “I had never met Epstein and had no knowledge of his criminal undertakings,” she said. “Numerous fake images and statements about Epstein and me have been calculating (sic) on social media for years now. Be cautious about what you believe.”
The Epstein files released by the Department of Justice earlier this year did contain one brief exchange that appeared to be between Melania and Maxwell. It was signed: “Love, Melania.”
The first email, sent by Melania in October, 2002, with the subject line “HI!” begins “Dear G!” Melania writes that there is a “nice story about JE in NY mag” before asking Maxwell about their travels and to call them when they are back in New York.
In her reply, “G. Max” wrote that while they are already on their way back to the city, they would not have time to see Melania, but they would “try and call.”
Melania and Ghislaine were photographed together a little over two weeks later. Two months later, Epstein was presented with the infamous birthday card containing a drawing of a naked woman and a weird note by Donald Trump. But remember, they’re all just casual acquaintances.
Then, Melania called on Congress to take sworn testimony in a public hearing from Epstein victims…probably just so long that they don’t compel her to testify. They forced Hillary Clinton to testify, who never met Jeffrey Epstein or Maxwell, and congressional Republicans are not going to force former Attorney General Pam Bondi to testify, but sure, let’s hear from all the victims whose names Bondi left unredacted, while leaving Melania alone.
So what spurred Melania to make this public announcement from the White House when Donald Trump is trying to distract all of us from the Epstein files? What was the point of starting a war with Iran to distract us from the Epstein files if Melania was just going to turn our attention right back to them a month later?
Trump even said that he didn’t know this announcement was going to happen, and it took him by surprise, like Kristi Noem’s husband with helium-filled balloon titties.
What happened? Did Barron ask, “Who’s my daddy?” Did Barron ask why there were so many photos of his mother and father with a pedophile? Did Barron eventually come around to asking why there are so many nude photos of his mommy on the internet? Did Barron ask about his father’s claim that you are allowed to grab women by the pussy as long as you are famous? Maybe Barron’s follow-up question was, “Mom, am I famous?” (snip-MORE-it’s great! Click the title to go see.)
I would rather have the undocumented workers live in my neighborhood than the greedy scheming homeowner who used these men for their skills and then not only stole their hard earned agreed to payment but also screwed them into what is basically a prison awaiting deportation to a place they may have no connection with. Ask yourself which party is the more moral and just? I read that the homeowner gave ICE the ladder to get to the men. This is slave labor and the reason why big companies use undocumented workers, they can hold their status over them to abuse them. Hugs
The moment in Cambridge was captured on video and shared on social media by a co-worker identified as Bryan Polanco.
“Seeing it is not the same as experiencing it,” Polanco could be heard saying in Spanish in the video reviewed by Newsweek. “I’ve seen many videos, and sadly today I had to experience it.”
A spokesperson for ICE told Newsweek, “This was a targeted enforcement operation, not a tip from a caller. On March 23, ICE conducted targeted enforcement operations near Cambridge, Maryland, resulting in the arrest of six illegal aliens. Of those arrested, several have final orders of removal—a felony—and one has been previously convicted of illegal reentry. During the encounter, the aliens refused to comply with lawful orders, taunted officers and attempted to flee. The illegal aliens ultimately complied and were taken into custody.
Newsweek reached out to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the construction company believed to have employed the workers, the reported homeowner, and Polanco for comment on Thursday afternoon.
Immigrants without legal status are known to work in key industries, including construction, and advocates have raised concerns multiple times that they would be targets for ICE, despite largely lacking criminal histories.
Stills from a video shared on social media of ICE agents arresting Guatemalan construction workers in Cambridge, Maryland, on March 23, 2026. | Instagram/@elsalvadordeantes
What To Know
The video was originally shared to Instagram as a 30-minute livestream before appearing as an edited clip on X on Wednesday afternoon.
In the footage, which begins on the roof of the property, federal agents could be seen on the lawn waiting for workers to get down. A ladder is brought, the workers get to the ground and ICE officers begin making arrests.
Polanco, the man believed to be filming and narrating the incident, is heard saying they are surrounded and telling agents he is filming, which he is entitled to do. He told agents that he was cooperating and asked why they were there.
Agents were then seen holding a group of workers on a mat on the ground before taking them away while the construction materials were left behind.
The woman was reported to owe the workers $10,000 for a three-day job, according to Univision, a local TV network. If that is proved to be true, she could potentially face charges under Maryland law, which includes a clause on a person not being able to obtain labor from another person if their consent is induced with the threat or wrongful use of notifying law enforcement of the worker’s undocumented or illegal immigration status. This also applies to withholding wages.
The outlet reported that the men were Guatemalan nationals and had traveled from Glen Burnie to start the project. Polanco told Univision that the woman said that if immigrants came back to finish the job, she would call ICE again.
Newsweek has not yet been able to identify the immigrants arrested or confirm their immigration status.
What People Are Saying
Bryan Polanco told Univision: “Very sad about the situation…many Hispanics here in the United States have felt like they were being persecuted. We left home and we don’t know if we are going to return.”
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, on X: “Very serious and disturbing allegation about a homeowner calling ICE on people working on her roof to avoid having to pay them. While the facts aren’t fully in yet, if the allegation is true it seems that this would be a felony under Maryland law.”
What Happens Next
DHS is yet to provide details on those arrested. Some social media users reacting to the video said the homeowner could face charges if she employed immigrants to carry out work, knowing she would call law enforcement on them.
Update, 03/27/26, 11:57 a.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from ICE.
A new report by The New York Times details how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu persuaded Donald Trump into going to war with Iran. Details in the story show that Donald Trump was oversold on the idea. But Trump wasn’t just oversold; he wanted to be told what he wanted to hear, even if it was wrong.
There was deep skepticism from his inner circle about going to war, and despite polling his top advisers, he often only heard “what he wanted to hear,” and his team wound up serving as an echo chamber for his gut instincts.
According to story written byJonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, JD Vance was the most vocal in his opposition to the United States going to war with Iran, while CIA Director Jim Ratcliffe, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Gen. Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned Trump that Netanyahu had “oversold” him on what could be achieved by the bombing campaign. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, on the other hand, was gung-ho on going to war. (snip-MORE, and it’s hot)
As predicted, Donald Trump taco’ed out again after threatening to commit genocide against the Iranian people.
Make no mistake about it, threatening to destroy an entire civilization is threatening genocide. Donald Trump was threatening to commit war crimes. (snip-MORE, also hot)
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On Easter Sunday, God’s chosen in the White House issued a vulgar and unbalanced posting on his “Truth Social” that epitomizes the insanity of his Iran War. Attending to it closely will help us understand how Trump has strengthened the government of the Islamic Republic and put it in control of global energy. Trump fondly imagines that he can dislodge Iran from this new ascendancy, but he is wrong, since it depends on sabotage, a sabotage that cannot be policed.
This is embarrassing, Delete it, President @realDonaldTrump – unless you want everyone to think you’ve lost your marbles.
The foul language and clear mental imbalance visible in this announcement sparked a further round of calls for Trump’s removal under Article 25 of the Constitution, which is nothing more than an internet meme since Trump has surrounded himself on his cabinet with people even more certifiable than he is, and who wouldn’t dare move against him.
Trump, having imbibed whatever substance it is that makes him manic, announced that “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!”
He is repeating a threat he made previously, to bomb Iran’s civilian electricity-generating plants as well as its civilian bridges.
Iran has 98 major power plants fueled by fossil gas, which generate 85% of the country’s electricity. The largest, the Damavand power plant south of the capital, Tehran, has a generating capacity of over 2.8 gigawatts.
One of Iran’s power plants is nuclear, at Bushehr. If Trump or Israel bombs it, the consequent radiation pollution will deeply harm the Arab Gulf states, not only through airborne particles but also by contaminating sea water, which is drawn on by the region’s desalinization plants. This exposure to radiation would certainly increase cancer risk in the region. There are mountains between Bushehr and the Iranian interior, so the radioactive particles would be blown west toward other countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Striking civilian power plants, and above all nuclear ones, endangers the noncombatant population of children, women and unarmed men and violates International Humanitarian Law.
In fact, the International Criminal Court in the Hague issued “warrants of arrest for two individuals, Mr Sergei Kuzhugetovich Shoigu and Mr Valery Vasilyevich Gerasimov, in the context of the situation in Ukraine for alleged international crimes . . .” on June 24, 2024. They were indicted for “for the war crime of directing attacks at civilian objects (article 8(2)(b)(ii) of the Rome Statute) and the war crime of causing excessive incidental harm to civilians or damage to civilian objects (article 8(2)(b)(iv) of the Rome Statute), and the crime against humanity of inhumane acts under article 7(1)(k) of the Rome Statute.”
Among the “civilian objects” that these Russian officials ordered attacked in Ukraine were power plants and structures such as the Kryukovsky Bridge.
So Trump is talking like a war criminal, which tells you why he has placed sanctions on International Criminal Court judges.
Trump already struck the unfinished B1 bridge linking Tehran to Karaj. Since it was not finished, it could not possibly have had a military purpose, contrary to the lies of the lying liars in the Trump administration who gave that as the excuse for hitting it.
Trump continued, “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell– JUST WATCH!
It is not clear how a body of water such as a strait could copulate. However, it can engender revenue, and does so for Iran. A lot of revenue.
Iran has not actually closed the Strait of Hormuz entirely. It is exporting its own petroleum through that narrow aperture, mainly to China. Trump has been forced by the global oil shortage to lift sanctions on the Iranian tankers, and so Iran is also selling again to India. Before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rushed Trump into war on Iran on February 28, Iran was exporting about 1.4 million barrels a day to China. The price of petroleum was about $67 a barrel then, but Iran had to offer a steep discount to offset American sanctions, and so was probably only getting $57 or less a barrel. So Iran was getting something like $29 billion a year for its petroleum from China and a few other customers (90% goes to China).
China is now likely having to pay $110 a barrel for Iranian petroleum.
Iran’s oil income just went up to $55 billion a year if these prices and this volume of trade persists, which is plausible. So the “crazy bastards” in charge of Iran have nearly doubled their income off the Netanyahu-Trump war because of the fertility, under their control, of the “fuckin’ Strait.” The Iranian oil industry is state-owned, so all the money goes to the clerics and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, as well as to the conventional army and the elected institutions, the parliament and president. This extra income helps the government tamp down resistance, strengthening it against civil society. In any case, many Iranians under foreign attack are rallying around the flag. Of course there are also tax losses from the economic disruption of the war, but the vastly increased oil income helps make up for them as far as the government is concerned. If the price of oil goes to $200 a barrel, as it may well, Iran’s government could get $100 billion a year for its petroleum.
Not only that, but Iran has instituted a toll system, wherein countries that have good relations with Iran and pay a fee can transit the Strait without fear of an Iranian drone attack. In contrast, countries that Iran believes contribute to the American war effort against Tehran such as the Emirates and Kuwait, are blockaded by the threat of such strikes. These tolls could be an ongoing and lucrative source of income for the government. Before the war, 138 ships transited the Strait daily. If that traffic resumes but each has to pay Iran a $2 million toll, that would bring in $96 billion a year, i.e. four times what Iran was getting for its petroleum before the war.
So here’s the thing. With the advent of Iran’s Shahed drones, which can be manufactured inexpensively and of which it has tens and thousands, there is no way for anyone, including Trump and the US military, to stop Iran from sabotaging ships that won’t pay the $2 million. At least, I don’t see how it could be done. You’d need tens of thousands of interceptors, and we hardly have any left. Moreover, interceptors cost $1.5 million apiece, so it makes much more sense to allow each ship to pay Iran the $2 million.
Container ship in Strait of Hormuz. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Indra Beaufort).Public Domain. Via Picryl .
Trump has shown Iran how it can go into the protection business in the Gulf for the long term. Nice oil shipping industry you have here, it would be a shame if anything happened to it. And off that, Iran actually increases its GDP substantially.
If Trump takes out Iran’s electricity and bridges, he can interfere with its economy and its society in a big way. But he can’t stop the drones or the protection racket that way. Moreover, Iran has made it clear that its response will be to take out the power plants in the Gulf Arab states as well as in Israel. Since the US and Israel are running low on interceptors, and since even small Shahed drones have great range and can do a lot of damage, Iran’s threat is credible.
If Trump takes out Iran’s petroleum-production capability, Iran will crash oil production in the Gulf, taking 20 million barrels a day off the market for years to come. That would certainly be another Great Depression and likely would spell the end of the oil industry, since everyone in the world would migrate to electric vehicles quickly.
So although Trump meant the phrase ironically and blasphemously, the Iranian authorities may well end up saying “Praise be to Allah” over Trump’s monumental stupidity.
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