United States | News & Politics

https://archive.ph/IQaIV

https://archive.ph/Mzz9T

“Amid months of threats by US leaders to attack drug gangs in Mexico, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum slapped back Monday against President Donald Trump’s assertion that her country is the “epicenter” of cartel violence by urging him to stem the flow of illegal arms across the border—and domestic demand for illicit narcotics.

“”If the flow of illegal weapons from the United States into Mexico were stopped, these groups wouldn’t have access to this type of high-powered weaponry to carry out their criminal activities,” Sheinabum said during her daily press briefing, citing a 2025 US Department of Justice report showing that approximately 3 in 4 guns used by Mexican criminal organizations were illicitly trafficked across the international border.”

He deserved far worse than having his house covered in a giant condom that read, “Helms is deadlier than a virus” (a brilliant stunt AIDS activists somehow pulled off in 1991). Instead, he spent 30 years in the Senate, retired in 2003, and died five years later, old and comfortable, on the Fourth of July.

Helms was so Trumpian that researching him made me wonder if he had hidden a piece of his soul for our president to discover, like Tom Riddle’s diary at Hogwarts. He started out as a pundit on talk radio. He disregarded norms. He knew how to harness white male anger through blistering populism. He was even said to have small hands.

Plus, he opposed sending US aid down what he called “ratholes” in poorer countries of the world, places that decades later Trump would call “shithole[s].” That was why he introduced the Helms Amendment in 1973, a ban on the use of foreign aid funds for abortion—a policy that under Reagan expanded with the Global Gag Rule. Fifty years later the Helms Amendment remains in place, renewed regularly by Congress, and an estimated 17,000 women die each year as a result. Trump, fittingly enough, broadened the Global Gag Rule’s restrictions on foreign aid in January, reaching beyond abortion to restrict international work around diversity and transgender rights. Helms would have been proud.

The agency is proposing allowing other tastes for vapes, like mint, coffees, spices or tea, to appeal to adults. At the same time, illicit candy-flavored types aimed at teenagers have flooded the market.

The real purpose of MAHA: addicting another generation to nicotine.

cross-posted from: https://ibbit.at/post/197080

A news publication has verified some of the details included in a woman’s testimony to the FBI in 2019, in which she accused President Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her when she was a minor. The publication in question — Charleston, South Carolina-based The Post and Courier — was not able to verify the woman’s allegations against Trump. However, it was able to confirm details about her…

Source

From Truthout via this RSS feed

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7895419

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/33841

US President Donald Trump baselessly claimed over the weekend that Iran was behind the strike on an Iranian elementary school that killed more than 160 people—mostly young girls—during the first wave of US-Israeli bombings, even as evidence mounted that an American missile attack caused the devastation.

A reporter aboard Air Force One asked Trump straightforwardly whether the US bombed "a girls' elementary school in southern Iran on the first day of the war," to which the president responded: "No. In my opinion, based on what I've seen, that was done by Iran."

The reporter then asked Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth, standing right behind the president, whether the claim was true, and he declined to endorse it, saying, "We're certainly investigating."

JUST NOW: “It was done by Iran.”🤔

Despite NYT analysis that a 🇺🇸 bomb killed those Iranian school girls, Trump insists Iran did it. (Hegseth hesitated to agree)

Color us unconvinced.

(H/T @Acyn) pic.twitter.com/jgPkudSm2h
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) March 7, 2026

Michael Waltz, the US ambassador to the United Nations, similarly declined to back Trump's claim, telling ABC*'*s Martha Raddatz on Sunday that he would "leave that to the investigators to determine."

"I can tell you, as a veteran, in no uncertain terms, the United States does everything it can to avoid civilian casualties," Waltz added. "Sometimes, of course, tragic mistakes occur."

The administration officials' comments on the massacre, which Human Rights Watch said should be investigated as a possible war crime, came as video footage, satellite images, and other evidence further indicated it was likely US forces who carried out the February 28 attack on the Iranian school in Minab. Reuters reported last week that, contrary to Trump's claim, US military investigators believe American forces were likely behind the school bombing.

"I guess acknowledging that you attacked a school and killed a bunch of children right off the bat might spoil POTUS's splendid little war," Brian Finucane, a former US State Department lawyer, wrote on social media.

The new video footage, which shows a Tomahawk missile hitting an Iranian military facility near the school, was released by the Iranian outlet Mehr News and analyzed by Bellingcat.

"The US is the only participant in the war that is known to have Tomahawk missiles," Bellingcat noted. "Israel is not known to have Tomahawk missiles."

New video footage shows a US Tomahawk missile hitting an IRGC facility in Minab, Iran, on Feb 28, showing for the first time that the US struck the area. The footage also shows smoke already rising from the vicinity of the girls’ school, where 175 people were reportedly killed. pic.twitter.com/4jBXrNcRJO
— Trevor Ball (@Easybakeovensz) March 8, 2026

The New York Times, which independently verified the video, observed that "as the camera pans to the right, large plumes of dust and smoke are already billowing from the area around the elementary school, suggesting that it had been struck shortly before the strike on the naval base."

"This is supported by a timeline of the strikes assembled by the Times that shows the school was hit around the time as the base," the newspaper added. "The Times has identified the weapon seen in the new video as a Tomahawk cruise missile, a weapon that neither the Israeli military nor the Iranian military has. Dozens of Tomahawks have been launched by US Navy warships into Iran since February 28, when the US-Israeli attack on Iran began."

A group of six Democratic US senators said in a joint statement late Sunday that they are "horrified" by the latest reports on the school strike, noting that "independent analysis credibly suggests the strike may have been conducted by US forces, which if true, would make it one of the worst cases of civilian casualties in decades of American military action in the Middle East."

"The killing of school children is appalling and unacceptable under any circumstance," said Sens. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Patty Murray of Washington, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Mark Warner of Virginia, and Chris Coons of Delaware. "This incident is particularly concerning in light of Secretary Hegseth’s openly cavalier approach to the use of force, including his statement that US strikes in Iran wouldn’t be bound by ‘stupid rules of engagement,’ in his words."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

​"For a representative democracy like ours to work, citizens must have some confidence that, through... political engagement, they have a fighting chance to turn their priorities into government policy," said an elections expert at the Brennan Center.

March 9, 2026

Late last month, the brothers and their parents, Luis Antonio Martínez and Emma Guadalupe Cuéllar, as well as their younger brother Joshua Gámez-Cuéllar, 12, were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to Texas representatives.

In a statement on Saturday, De La Cruz, a Republican whose district includes McAllen, where the family live, said that the family’s story “breaks my heart”.

“South Texans know better than anyone that we can secure our border and still treat people with dignity – these are not competing values,” she said.

“I have repeatedly urged that enforcement target those who actually threaten our communities, not good, law-abiding, talented people who are working through the legal process. My office is closely monitoring their situation and we are doing all we can.”

March 8, 2026

Fox News used old video of Donald Trump in multiple reports on Saturday and Sunday, concealing from viewers that the commander-in-chief wore a golf hat throughout a ceremony on Saturday in which he saluted six flag-draped transfer cases carrying the remains of the first US troops to die in his war on Iran.

The president had stirred outrage online by failing to remove his Trump-brand white hat during the ritual homecoming at Dover air force base in Delaware on Saturday for six army reserve soldiers killed in Kuwait.

ICE agents have been turning up in cars around Somali-owned businesses and schools that teach children from immigrant backgrounds. Rightwing so-called “influencers”, including leaders at Turning Point USA, have followed suit.

Since then, Somali-owned businesses have struggled to attract customers and schools have closed due to low attendance fueled by the presence of federal agents and anti-immigrant provocateurs.

Today, the Somali community in Columbus, which numbers around 60,000 people, is still reeling from the fallout.