United States | News & Politics

A US lobbying firm closely connected to the Trump administration has been handed a $2m contract to represent Khalifa Haftar, a Libyan warlord and de facto leader of large swaths of the country who faces multiple allegations of human rights abuses.

Lobbying disclosure agreements reported by the Washington Post revealed that Ballard Partners, which is staffed by former Trump administration officials, has agreed to advance the interests of Haftar, general commander of his self-styled Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF), and his son Sadddam, chief of staff of the ground forces.

Haftar and his forces face allegations of human rights abuses, which are reportedly perpetrated in the detention centres they run.

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What the National Guard is supposed to be for... let us not forget and let fascists tell us a different story.

https://www.dvidshub.net/video/1000465/coast-guard-conducts-overflights-impacted-areas-following-flash-floods-oahu

A lot of the world’s fertilizer turns out to come from that area and normally get shipped through the strait. And the United States, we’re a great agricultural nation, and we do import significant amounts of fertilizer. We import a large share of our fertilizer, and some of it from the Persian Gulf, a significant share of that.

So this is having a direct impact on U.S. farmers.

Most people in the United States are significantly adversely affected by the spillover from this war. Now, oil companies, particularly oil refiners, who seem to be seeing a big explosion in their margins, they’re doing well, but what good does that do the rest of us? It’s not as if the U.S. has any fiscal measures in place to capture those gains. So this is in fact, this is hitting the United States, it’s hitting all of us quite hard, and it may be actually kind of catastrophic because plans, plans to travel, never mind, but plans to plant crops may be seriously endangered by all of this.

Has anybody told Trump about this? From everything we’re reading, the answer is probably not. Basically, we’re in a situation where the courtiers don’t tell the emperor that he has no clothes and don’t tell him that actually war in the Persian Gulf really hurts the United States a lot, too. So, you know, God knows.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy was supposed to start the year with a bang, fueled by an unusually large jump in tax refunds from President Donald Trump’s tax cut legislation. Yet spiking gas prices are on track to eat up those refunds, leaving most Americans with little extra to spend.

“Next spring is projected to be the largest tax refund season of all time,” Trump said in a prime-time speech in December that was intended to address voters’ concerns about the economy and stubbornly high prices.

But that was before the Iran war, which began Feb. 28. Oil and gas prices have soared since then, with the nationwide average price of gas reaching $3.94 Sunday, up more than a dollar from just a month earlier.

2,666 Melania sequels

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Bloomberg

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John Wilson grew up as a renter before his biotech company took off. Now he wants to help people struggling after Operation Metro Surge.

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Mark Robinson, who ran for North Carolina governor in 2024, tells podcast he had ‘obsession’ with porn and sex