The New Republic

Trump Confirms He’s Hoarding Billions From Venezuelan Oil

2 hours agoLeft

President Trump still won’t say where exactly the $13 billion of Venezuelan oil revenue that his administration collected has gone.“There’s some reports that the United States has taken in $13 billion from Venezuela,” a reporter asked Trump at the Air Force One press gaggle on Monday afternoon. “Where is that money going?”“Thirteen billion from Venezuela? I think even more than that,” Trump replied. “Venezuela, we paid for that war many times over. And that’ll happen with Iran also. We paid for the war many times over.”“But where’s that money going?”“No other president can say that for a long time,” Trump continued, ignoring the question. “We had a cost.... We paid for it many many times over. And now, as you know, we have a very good relationship with Venezuela.”“But where is the money going?” the reporter asked yet again.“It goes toward running the country.”“No … the money that the U.S. is taking in, where is that money going?”“From Venezuela?”“Yes.”“Towards running the country. It can go to the military. Congress has to approve it.... We’re taking in a lot of money. Billions and billions of dollars from Venezuela.”The president couldn’t offer anything close to a straight answer on where those billions went. First, the story was that it’d go back to the Venezuelan people, whom Trump pretends to care about very much. But last week, the Financial Times reported that after six months and two devastating earthquakes, the money is still nowhere to be found. The publication reported that the Trump administration must have collected an estimated $13 billion, though Trump’s statement on Monday is the first hint at an actual number.The last solid lead we had on that money was when Semafor reported that Trump would be keeping proceeds from the first sale in an offshore bank account based in Qatar. Maybe that has something to do with his nonanswer. Q: There's some reports that the United States has taken in $13 billion from Venezuela. What where is that money going?Trump: That will happen with Iran also. Q: Where is the money going?Trump: Running the country. pic.twitter.com/yGvQDtGQJj— Acyn (@Acyn) July 27, 2026

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Former Trump aide: No one who works for him actually likes him

Alternet.org

19 minutes ago

Former Trump aide: No one who works for him actually likes him

President Donald Trump’s former communications director has a news flash for the Republican’s supporters — none of the people who work for him actually like the man.“Getting fired after 11 days was brutal, but there was also a genuine sense of relief,” Anthony Scaramucci posted on X on Monday. “Yes I had a shortcoming. I failed at the job. There was humiliation in it, but there was also relief.”He continued, “Here's what I've observed about everyone around Trump. Nobody likes him. I don't think his family members like him. I don't think his cabinet members really like him. They kiss his a—— because he's powerful.”Scaramucci concluded, “The people who genuinely like him are one or two electron orbits away, close enough to feel the warmth, far enough to avoid the heat. I don't know a single person in his inner circle who came out unscathed.”Scaramucci has been an outspoken critic of Trump in recent years. Indeed, in July alone, he issued a warning to Trump’s staffers in which he argued on X that “there’s one thing every rising star in Trump’s orbit eventually learns the hard way. He eats his young. And if you don’t believe me, ask Pence, ask Pompeo, ask Nikki Haley.”Also in July, he blasted the Trump administration for engaging in insider trading.“Answer these questions: Are you allowed to insider trade in Congress?” Scaramucci posted on X. “Can the president do his so-called businessman’s deals? Is any of this actually legal?”He continued, “My opinion is: It smells terrible and it should be stopped. But we’ve lost our sense of shame. Trump said 2 things: 1. It’s peanuts and not that much money. 2. Nobody cares. That second one is the one that should keep you up at night.”Scaramucci finished by writing, “Hopefully people actually do care. Hopefully they show up in November and send these guys a message.”Similarly in July, Scaramucci opined that Trump may be compromised by his Russian counterpart, President Vladimir Putin.“If Trump is disavowing NATO and breaking an 80 year tradition — something’s wrong,” Scaramucci speculated on X. “If Trump is praising Vladimir Putin, whose entire economy is slightly smaller than the state of Texas — something’s wrong. If Trump is disavowing the 1994 defense agreement where we told Ukraine to give up their nuclear weapons and we’d protect them — the agreement that got him impeached in his first term — something is wrong.”He observed that while Trump frequently criticizes other world leaders, he keeps a wide berth from Putin.“It’s hard to watch as an American but it’s obvious,” Scaramucci said. “Why does he own him? That’ll probably come out someday.”In response to the AlterNet piece on Trump and Russia, White House spokesman Davis Ingle replied, “Anthony Scaramucci lasted 11 short days in the White House. He makes lightweights look credible.”Speaking with this journalist for Salon in 2018, Scaramucci argued that Trump was elected in 2016 because of Americans’ concerns with the cost of living.“What I saw was in a generation we went from aspirational working class families, like the one I grew up in, to [desperate] working class families,” Scaramucci said. “What I saw is a decline in wages causing some level of economic asphyxiation for a very large group of people. And so Trump being out there, going into those areas, explaining the policies that he’s going to put in place, and then executing on some of those policies. I mean it’s not me saying, it’s just go look at ‘The Wall Street Journal.’”

Left

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Truthout

1 hour ago

Trump Is Already Outpacing His First-Term Record Number of Airstrikes on Somalia

The Trump administration cut humanitarian aid to Somalia while continuing to pound it with military airstrikes.

Far Left

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'Feels like an earthquake': Trump threatens elderly care after Supreme Court ruling

Raw Story

1 hour ago

'Feels like an earthquake': Trump threatens elderly care after Supreme Court ruling

President Donald Trump is using powers enabled by a recent Supreme Court decision to force thousands out of jobs, and it's the elderly who could face "dire consequences" of his actions.Last month, the court ruled in Mullin v. Doe that federal law bars judges from reviewing presidential decisions on Temporary Protected Status — meaning no court can stop Trump from terminating it, according to CBS News.The ruling's mandate took effect Monday, ending TPS for an estimated 348,000 Haitians — including 13,000 nursing assistants and 8,000 caregivers, Princeton University research fellow Phillip Connor found.A peer-reviewed study in The Gerontologist found that staffing shortages have "dire consequences for residents" of nursing homes and long-term care facilities, where certified nursing assistants provide up to 90% of direct resident care. When staffing levels fall short, the study warned, "residents are at elevated risk for neglect and harm" — including infection and rehospitalization.LeadingAge, which represents nursing home providers, said facilities face closing units or turning away new residents entirely until vacancies are filled.For Haitian communities across the country, the human cost is already being felt. "Once again our community members find themselves in a state of extreme trauma, fear and terror. One of them told me it feels like a tsunami or an earthquake with nonstop aftershocks," Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, told CBS News.The ruling that handed Trump this authority reversed a lower court that had found the TPS termination was "in part" rooted in "racial animus." The Supreme Court's majority overrode that finding, ruling that presidential TPS decisions are not subject to judicial review. Department of Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival celebrated on X, writing, "The T in TPS stands for TEMPORARY."White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson called it "a tremendous win," telling Fox News the ruling affirmed that TPS "was never intended to be a pathway to permanent status."DHS told CBS News it was "closing time," and offered departing Haitians a $2,600 check and a free flight home.A Senate bill that would have extended TPS protections for three years failed this week. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce had urged senators to act, warning of "significant disruption to America's work force."Jozef said the fear has reached into the smallest corners of family life."Her little girl doesn't even want to go to school for fear of coming home and not finding her mother," she said.

Far Left

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GOP more divided now than when Trump’s tax bill passed: Bob Cusack

Washington Examiner

1 hour ago

GOP more divided now than when Trump’s tax bill passed: Bob Cusack

Washington Examiner Executive Editor Bob Cusack said Republicans are more divided now than when President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed a year ago. “Democrats don’t like this bill, they call it the ‘big ugly bill,’ but unlike Obamacare and Democratic bills, Democrats don’t go as far to say, ‘We want to repeal […]

Center Right

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Trump, Congress and world leaders to honor the late Sen. Lindsey Graham in Washington

NBC News Politics

1 hour ago

Trump, Congress and world leaders to honor the late Sen. Lindsey Graham in Washington

World leaders, President Donald Trump and officials in Washington will pay their respects in funeral services for Republican Sen. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Center Left

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'Antidemocratic plot afoot': Presidential historian exposes Trump’s 'slow-moving coup'

Alternet.org

1 hour ago

'Antidemocratic plot afoot': Presidential historian exposes Trump’s 'slow-moving coup'

In recent months, experts have pointed to various warning signs that President Donald Trump is engaged in a “slow-moving coup” as he attempts to maintain his grip on power. On Monday, with the highly consequential midterms less than 100 days away, a leading presidential historian took to Vanity Fair to assert there is an “antidemocratic plot afoot,” and to explain Trump’s “authoritarian formula.”According to lawyer and presidential historian James Robenalt, “There's a radical, antidemocratic plot afoot, cooked up at the highest levels of the Trump executive branch — drawing in the Department of Justice, the leadership of the intelligence community, and possibly even the Pentagon — to tilt November’s midterm elections to Republican candidates, so as to ensure that the president’s party retains control of the House and Senate." As Robenalt explains, the plot is revealed by Trump’s effort to federalize elections, which the Constitution very clearly states are to be overseen by states. Trump has attempted to assert federal control via executive order, but has been “consistently” and “easily” rebuked by the courts, as the Constitution allows only Congress to override state mandates.“Trump’s defeats in court help explain his fixation on the so-called SAVE America Act, short for ‘Safeguard American Voter Eligibility,’” writes Robenalt. “The president has even admitted, however grudgingly, that only Congress can create new election standards. The proposed bill, already considered by a somewhat skeptical House, and even more wary Senate, fuses two of Trump’s favorite obsessions: illegal immigration and voter fraud. Illegal immigration helped carry him to victory in 2016; alleged rigged elections powered some of his political messaging in 2024.”“If enacted, the SAVE America bill would make states demand documentary proof of citizenship — passports, birth certificates and the like — before voters could register or update their registration, and would require the corresponding paperwork to be presented in person to a local board,” but according to Robenalt, repeated pushback from both sides of the aisle suggests that Congress won’t pass the bill. “Here, then, is where the story turns thorny,” he writes. “If Congress chooses not to support initiatives to curb certain types of voting or certain types of voters, Trump and his surrogates have other options.”“First off,” he explains, “they have been using what many observers consider an authoritarian formula to attack democracy itself: attempting, through public pronouncements and a flurry of activities, to slowly and steadily degrade voters’ confidence in election integrity; raise the specter of criminal indictments of enemies; increase the rhetoric against ‘violent left-wing extremists’ and ‘communists’; and take endless swipes at the free press.”“Secondly,” Robenalt continues, “the administration’s recent moves fit a pattern. Remove election guardians and guardrails. Weaken intelligence channels that might deter foreign interference. Use strong-arm tactics, such as the confiscation of old ballots, to intimidate officials and possibly serve as a dress rehearsal for federal muscle-flexing in future elections. Threaten prison time for those who refuse to comply. Announce to America’s adversaries that US elections are vulnerable, thereby inviting the very interference the administration decries. Then, theoretically, use that alleged foreign interference as a pretext to cancel elections, invoke the Insurrection Act, or send troops or ICE agents to the polls.”“It could all play out,” warns Robenalt, “as several pundits have remarked, very much as Hemingway famously described bankruptcy: gradually, then suddenly. Some catalytic event — a Reichstag Fire analogue, or another January 6, or a bogus declassification purporting to show foreign hackers changing votes — could be used to manufacture a phony rationale for emergency action.”As journalist Jonathan Alter pointed out, “Trump never made any secret of his intentions, explaining to Republicans in January of 2026 on the fifth anniversary of the January 6 insurrection, ‘You’ve gotta win the midterms, because if we don’t win the midterms, they’ll find a reason to impeach me.’” According to Robenalt, “The president has shown, time and again, that he will go to unprecedented lengths so as not to relinquish power,” and Americans must not take for granted that he will give up without a fight. “Those who cherish democracy must stay alert,” Robenalt concludes. “Vigilance remains the first defense. But the essential act is simpler still: vote. Vote early, if you can, because early voting makes election-day obstruction that much harder to pull off.”

Left

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Newly discovered invoice catches Trump aide in huge Epstein lie — report

Raw Story

1 hour ago

Newly discovered invoice catches Trump aide in huge Epstein lie — report

Jeffrey Epstein's relationship with a firm once run by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick may date back 11 years further than previously known, according to a newly unearthed document flagged by independent journalist Kaitlyn Pierce, who writes under the name Kait Justice.Lutnick told The New York Post last year that he had cut off all ties with Epstein in 2005, but the Justice Department's release of Epstein-related files quickly contradicted that claim. The files showed Lutnick visited Epstein's private island in 2012 and that the two maintained contact through at least 2018.Lutnick and Epstein were also discovered to have been “in business together as recently as 2014,” per CBS News, with the two of them both signing onto a deal to acquire stakes in a now-defunct technology company called Adfin. Lutnick was explicitly asked by the House Oversight Committee in May whether he was aware of any other business dealings between Epstein and Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial services firm he once ran before handing off control to his sons after joining the Trump administration. Lutnick said, “to the best of my recollection,” there were no other business dealings between Epstein and Cantor.Justice, while searching through millions of Epstein-related files, stumbled upon a telling FedEx invoice that she suggested may undercut that claim.“I did not expect to find Epstein in Cantor’s records,” Justice wrote in a report published Monday on her Substack.The invoice is dated July 27, 2001, and reveals that Darren Indyke – once Epstein’s personal lawyer – had sent an overnight envelope from Epstein’s office in New York City, New York, to a Robert F. Mace at Cantor Fitzgerald Securities, located on the 104th floor of the One World Trade Center. Mace was Cantor’s employment lawyer, and would be killed in the 9/11 attacks just 53 days after being sent the envelope from Epstein.“The invoice clearly doesn’t tell us what the envelope contained, but it does place Epstein’s office in direct contact with Lutnick’s firm 11 years before the relationship Lutnick described to Congress supposedly began,” Justice wrote. “Cantor’s customer and trading records could show whether Epstein or any of his companies had an account there, what they bought or sold through the firm and when the relationship actually began.”Justice uncovered another Epstein-related correspondence when sifting through Cantor’s history: a 2009 email to Epstein with a message attributed to a Rich Barnett.“HOward [sic] Lutnick would like to speak to you...one of his employees asked me if Howard could have your number so he may call you,” the emailed message reads. “Would you like me to give him your number? They did not give me Howard's number....”Justice could not verify the identity of Barnett, though his identity appeared to cause confusion during the House Oversight Committee’s interview of Lutnick.“Barnett makes the story stranger because no one can seem to agree about whom he worked for. When congressional investigators showed Lutnick the 2009 message, he said Barnett worked for him at Cantor, was ‘on my staff’ and handled construction matters,” Justice wrote. “Committee counsel later described Barnett as an Epstein employee. Epstein’s records establish Barnett’s employment on that side, but the public transcript does not show investigators producing Cantor payroll, contracts or payment records that could determine whether Barnett also worked for Lutnick or Cantor.”

Far Left

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