Trump Iran deal: It’s not a victory if the regime survives
Center Right
President Donald Trump has announced that an agreement with Iran has been largely negotiated and now awaits finalization. If the agreement permanently removes the threats that brought the region to the brink of a wider conflict, it would represent a significant achievement. But announcements are not outcomes. The real test is whether the final deal […]
Hours after a deadly shooting incident outside the White House, President Donald Trump took to Truth Social just after midnight to thank the Secret Service and, in the same post, push for the construction of his controversial White House ballroom.In a post published shortly after 12 a.m. Eastern, Trump opened with praise for the agents who killed the gunman near the White House gates earlier in the evening. He described the suspect as a man with "a violent history and possible obsession with our Country's most cherished structure.""Thank you to our great Secret Service and Law Enforcement for the swift and professional action taken this evening against a gunman near the White House," Trump wrote.The president then pivoted to his ballroom project. Trump argued that the shooting, combined with what he called the "White House Correspondent'Dinner shooting" from a month earlier, demonstrated the need for what he has been describing as a massive new venue on the White House grounds."This event is one month removed from the White House Correspondent'Dinner shooting, and goes to show how important it is, for all future Presidents, to get, what will be, the most safe and secure space of its kind ever built in Washington, D.C.," Trump wrote, along with the prominent typo.He closed with a familiar appeal."The National Security of our Country demands it!" Trump added.The ballroom, which Trump has touted as one of his second-term priorities, has drawn criticism from lawmakers and watchdogs who view it as a vanity project and claim that the security justification is stretched well beyond its merits. Trump's overnight post Sunday morning is the latest in a pattern of using public safety incidents and high-profile news events as occasions to argue for the ballroom's necessity.
Under the heading of Fiddling While Rome Burns, a new potential viral plague is gaining steam in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda – a strain that has no targeted vaccine to prevent it nor treatment to cure it, making it a nightmare to try to contain.But you know our president is too focused on his ballroom to give it much thought.The reality is this: as of Tuesday, an Ebola virus outbreak in the above-named African nations had more than 500 suspected cases and some 130 deaths. According to the World Health Organization, It involves the much rarer Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, as opposed to the significantly more common Zaire form for which a vaccine and treatments exist.How is the United States responding? Well, the State Department is “strongly urging” Americans not to travel to the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan or Uganda, and to reconsider travel to Rwanda. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an order barring foreigners from entering the U.S. if they were in any of the above-named countries in the previous 21 days. It assessed the risk to the general American public as “low.”This is all well and good. The problem is that under President Trump, we have pulled out of the WHO and gutted the CDC, greatly restricting our capacity to monitor and respond to an international public health emergency like the Ebola one. We are now less able to detect, coordinate around and contain an Ebola threat early.The weakening of our virus containment apparatus should concern everyone, disturbingly restricting many of the systems that matter most in the first days of an outbreak (i.e. right now). By leaving, the U.S. voluntarily ended formal participation in WHO technical committees and real-time surveillance groups and withdrew staff embedded in WHO operations. That means fewer U.S. personnel plugged into international outbreak intelligence.The radical cuts to the CDC mean fewer epidemiologists and, therefore, less surge capacity and ability to respond quickly. In short, it points to a hampered ability to respond to Ebola before it arrives here and reduced resilience once it does.Why did Trump withdraw us from the WHO? Because he blamed the organization for what he perceived as a delayed response to COVID when in fact it was merely scapegoated for the president’s own deplorable lack of urgency.Public health experts widely regard America’s reaction to the COVID threat as massively slow and flawed. It could have been nipped in the bud, but Trump, early on, treated the virus less like a deadly health emergency than a temporary PR problem. If strong mitigation measures (mask guidance, distancing, limits on gatherings, testing expansion) had begun even two weeks earlier, it’s likely tens of thousands of deaths could have been prevented.Let’s take a look back at a partial timeline of Trump’s COVID response quotes:February 2, 2020: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”February 10, 2020: “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”February 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. The stock market is starting to look very good to me!”February 26: “The 15 cases (in the U.S.) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”March 6: “You have to be calm. It’ll go away.”March 15: “It’s something we have tremendous control over.”By April 2020, U.S. deaths from COVID would surpass 20,000. By the end of 2020, there would be more than 385,000 confirmed COVID-related fatalities in the United States, making it the third-leading cause of death that year behind heart disease and cancer. Ebola is a different beast altogether, of course. For the uninitiated, it’s an illness caused by a group of related viruses first discovered in 1976 in the nations now known as South Sudan and Congo in a region near the Ebola River. Fruit bats are thought to carry the viruses without being sickened by them.People stricken with Ebola may first experience so-called “dry symptoms” such as fever, aches, pains and fatigue before progressing to “wet symptoms” that include diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding. It’s contracted through contact with the bodily fluids of an infected, sick or dead person and contaminated objects like clothing, bedding, needles or medical equipment.Ebola is, more often than not, fatal. There have been several outbreaks since 2000, and in more than 70 percent of cases the victim died. It is clearly an extremely virulent virus that spreads easily through direct contact.Are we vulnerable in America to an Ebola plague? Not in the traditional sense. Since it spreads only by direct contact and not through easy airborne transmission like COVID or the measles, a large uncontrolled U.S.
One of Democrats’ best pick-up opportunities in the Senate this November is an unexpected one. Graham Platner, the presumptive Democratic nominee in the race against Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), has been scandal-prone, complete with a Nazi symbol tattoo, but is polling ahead of the five-term incumbent from Maine. Last week alone Platner, 41, faced a […]
Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) sounded the alarm this weekend over a purported sweetheart deal that gave President Donald Trump direct financial control over a public Florida airport, telling his X followers the story has not received the attention it deserves.In a post on social media, Levin laid out how a Florida county effectively handed Trump the trademark and licensing rights to a public airport, with the president now positioned to profit off branded merchandise tied to the facility."Not enough people are talking about this," Levin wrote. "A Florida airport was renamed after Donald Trump. He walked away with the trademark, the licensing rights, and a deal that lets him profit off every piece of merchandise sold there."The deal Levin referenced is the same agreement the Guardian's Richard Luscombe reported on earlier this month, detailing how Palm Beach International Airport was rebranded as the President Donald J. Trump International Airport in a narrow vote of the Palm Beach County Commission. The airport sits less than five miles from Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate.According to the Guardian, the licensing agreement was signed by Trump last weekend and approved by the commission on a 4-3 vote in which the deciding ballot was cast by Maria Sachs, a Democrat. The remaining six commissioners split along party lines.The agreement was struck with DTTM Operations LLC, the Delaware-based Trump Organization affiliate run by Donald Trump Jr. that handles licensing, marketing, and intellectual property for the family, according to the report.Trademark attorney Josh Gerben, who has no connection to the deal, told the Guardian that the structure was "unusual." Trump gets to pick the vendors who manufacture branded merchandise, can monetize the new airport name however he wants, and can license the trademark to any third party of his choosing. Although the agreement bars "direct financial compensation" from goods sold at the airport, the Trump Organization can cash in on the same merchandise sold anywhere else, including on Trump's own online store.Trump also retains final approval over how his name, image, and likeness are portrayed at the airport."The clause effectively limits the county's editorial discretion, ensuring that portrayals of Trump, as both an individual and a former president, align with his personal preferences," Gerben told the Guardian.Levin honed in on how the deal got done as much as on the deal itself.According to Levin, county staff warned commissioners that rejecting the renaming proposal could trigger retaliation from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, with state transportation funding at risk. The Guardian's reporting confirms that account, noting that staff told the hearing that failure to comply with state law could jeopardize transportation funding and grant assurances from the state."DeSantis has already removed state attorneys and school board members who dared to cross him," Levin wrote. "That is the reality the Democratic commissioner who cast the deciding vote was living in when she made her choice: hand Donald Trump control of a public airport or watch Florida Republicans strip funding from the very people she was elected to represent."Sachs defended her vote in a statement to the Guardian, saying the commission was not voting on whether to change the airport's name but rather "approving a licensing agreement necessary to protect the county from trademark liability."Levin did not see the situation that way."That is absolutely insane," he wrote Saturday. "Florida Republicans handed Trump a money machine and called it a naming rights deal, and the people of Palm Beach County never got a say in any of it."
The Trump administration is going after a pair of influencers because of their support and visits to Cuba, according to reporting by Fox News. Progressive influencers Hasan Piker and CodePink cofounder Susan Medea Benjamin were served subpoenas by the Treasury Department on Saturday, Fox News reported. The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control requested "financial, logistical and communications information" from the two, according to Fox News. The subpoenas are part of an investigation into possible violations of U.S. sanctions against Cuba. Piker and members of CodePink were in Havana, Cuba as part of a "united front" to support the country's communist government, according to Fox News' reporting.
