Trump Does Massive Favor for Venezuelan President He Installed

The Trump administration is giving Venezuela’s new leadership a free pass.

The White House has instructed federal prosecutors in Miami to avoid criminal investigations into acting President Delcy Rodríguez, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

Rodríguez has been on the Drug Enforcement Administration’s radar since at least 2018, and has been tied to all sorts of criminal activity ranging from drug trafficking to gold smuggling. But all of that is apparently being brushed under the rug, as the Trump administration shows blatant favoritism toward the leader it installed earlier this year.

It is not clear if prosecutors were working toward charging Rodríguez with a crime. A Justice Department spokesperson told the AP in an email that “there was never an investigation into her to shut down.”

U.S. officials told the AP that the directive was intended to ease Rodríguez’s transition into power in Venezuela, and to avoid further destabilizing the oil-rich nation.

Donald Trump ordered U.S. forces to invade Venezuela in early January, sending hundreds of troops through its capital city, Caracas, to capture the country’s 13-year ruler, Nicolás Maduro. Maduro and his wife were transported to New York to face federal narcotics charges, to which they both have pleaded not guilty.

Trump failed to notify Congress before doing so, but he didn’t forget to tip off his friends at America’s biggest oil companies, which stand to gain the most from America’s newfound control over Venezuela’s oil supply—the largest in the world.

Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s vice president, was the major political benefactor of his sudden abduction. Despite her criminal affiliations, the Trump administration has opened the door for her to do business with the U.S., lifting sanctions (that were placed during Trump’s first term after she undermined Venezuelan democracy by supporting Maduro’s authoritarian rule) and allowing her to reestablish ties with U.S. banks, according to the Associated Press.

Beyond that, Trump has uplifted her name in an effort to sanitize her character, describing her as a “terrific person.”

Katie Miller doxed the Democrats’ social media manager after the party’s official account called her husband an “ugly fuck” following his transphobic comments towards Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico.

“The Democrats made history in Texas by nominating their first transgender senate candidate,” Miller wrote Wednesday over a post of Talarico, a baseless and nonsensical insult. Talarico is not trans, but has expressed support.

“Shut up you ugly fuck,” the Democrats responded, easily ratioing Miller’s original post.

That harsh, scary language got his wife, Katie Miller posting in his defense.

“Paulina Mangubat is who runs @TheDemocrats account. She’s 30, unmarried with no kids. Put your name on it next time,” Miller wrote, posting a picture of Mangubat. “This is what a sad, unhappy, female Liberal looks like. It’s why Pew reports 50% of them have been diagnosed with a mental condition.”

For what it’s worth, Miller’s post is pure projection. In the single picture she posted Mangubat looks nice, put together, and professional—much better than her husband who started this entire exchange in the first place.

Miller then went on Fox News to talk about how saying “ugly fuck” on X to her husband is the kind of behavior that led to the multiple failed assassination attempts on Donald Trump, even calling it “violent”—a ridiculous argument given Trump’s own violent rhetoric. Meanwhile, her husband is part of an administration that has shot and killed American citizens in the street. They know very well what real violence is. And what’s lost here is that this is all part of a last-gasp GOP attempt to slander Talarico because they’re afraid he’ll beat their boy Ken Paxton in the midterms.

For her part, Mangubat responded in good nature to Miller’s deranged post.

“Well, now seems like a good time to share that I’m getting married! We just put down the deposit on the venue and bought my dress lol,” she wrote. “I didn’t end up picking this one but I thought it looked nice.”

President Trump wants something else with his name and face on it: American currency.

U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach and his senior adviser Mike Brown, both political appointees, have been pushing staff at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing for prototypes of a $250 bill with Trump’s name and face on it, The Washington Post reports. U.S. law doesn’t allow for living people to be placed on bills, and employees were alarmed enough to anonymously speak to the Post.

Last August and September, Beach presented staff at the bureau with mock-up designs of the bill, with one of them featuring Trump’s face in the middle between the signatures of the president and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent.

The Post spoke to the designer, British painter Iain Alexander, who said Trump suggested changes such as adding the colors red, white, and blue, as well as a logo commemorating the country’s 250 anniversary in July.

“He likes to call me his favorite British artist,” Alexander told the publication. Alexander is a former competitive swimmer and DJ who calls himself a royal portrait artist of Queen Elizabeth II and other royal figures.

Putting pictures of living people on American currency has been illegal since 1866, and a bill to allow Trump’s face on a $250 bill was introduced last year but has stalled in Congress. The bureau’s printing director, Patricia Solimene, was reassigned from her position after she tried to explain the legal and procedural hurdles to producing the Trump money, saying it would take years.

“She had told them we’re not authorized to do this. We can’t progress any further, and all the stakeholders have not even met to discuss the next steps,” an employee anonymously told the Post. “Currency often takes six to eight years to produce a new bill, particularly one of such high value.”

On April 27, Solimene said she was reassigned, telling employees the next day that she was leaving with a “heavy heart” and that it was “not my choice.” She said she “never sacrificed the values or character of myself or the organization and always prioritized the U.S. Currency Program and the value each employee brings to the mission.” Brown was named the bureau’s acting director soon afterward.

Trump’s second term in office has been a vanity project, as he has plastered his face and name on federal buildings and the U.S. passport. He has also sought to build a massive ballroom at the White House, a gigantic arch in Washington, D.C., and a golf course near the Potomac. He’s even trying to name an entire class of battleships after himself. Will he get his own money too?

Two major performing artists have bailed on President Trump’s America 250 celebrations on the National Mall since the administration included them in the lineup.

Freedom 250 on Wednesday announced a list of performers for the “Great American State Fair,” which will take place from June 25 to July 10 in Washington, D.C.

Just hours later, Morris Day and the Time dropped out.

“Contrary to rumor, Morris Day & the Time will not be performing at the ‘“GREAT AMERICAN STATE FAIR,’” they posted in a graphic on Facebook captioned “It’s a no for me.”

Rapper Young MC, best known for his song “Bust a Move,” followed suit, announcing that he’d be refusing to perform at the “Trump-backed” event.

“I HAVE INFORMED MY AGENTS THAT I WILL NOT BE PERFORMING AT THE FREEDOM 250 EVENT,” he wrote on Facebook. “The artists were never told about any political involvement with the event. And despite the claims by the organizers that the event is non-partisan, SPIN magazine describes it as Trump-backed.” I hope to perform in D.C. in the near future at an event that is not so politically charged.”

The other scheduled acts—the Commodores, Flo Rida, Milli Vanilli, Martina McBride, and Vanilla Ice—have yet to make any announcements. This lineup of artists was already questionable given that most of them haven’t been relevant in years. But now performers who were announced are dropping out, and at least one of them directly blamed President Trump for it. More withdrawals may soon come.

A top White House adviser intervened to send a massive defense loan to a company linked to Donald Trump Jr., ProPublica reported Thursday.

In November, the Pentagon announced a $620 million loan to Vulcan Elements, a start-up manufacturer of rare earth elements. Just three months earlier, Don Jr.’s venture capital firm 1789 Capital had purchased a large stake in the company. When the Defense Department deal first came together, those involved were quick to deny allegations of political favoritism.

But in fact, the deal was reportedly the work of the White House.

The massive loan was personally directed by Peter Navarro, a White House adviser who is also a friend of the president’s son, according to interviews and DOD records obtained by ProPublica. Of the many companies being considered to receive funding, Vulcan was the only one that garnered the attention of one of the president’s top aides, one Pentagon official told ProPublica.

Defense officials were instructed to move at a rapid pace to see that the loan was processed, and it went through within a matter of weeks, according to another Pentagon official who spoke to ProPublica. “The call came from the White House: We have to get this done,” the person said.

Navarro and Don Jr. are chummy. The president’s son visited Navarro in prison, and he was one of the few people listed in the dedication of Navarro’s latest book, I Went to Prison So You Won’t Have To. A week before the Vulcan deal was officially announced, Don Jr. hosted Navarro on his streaming show and urged viewers to buy the book.

A spokesperson for Don Jr. told ProPublica that the president’s son had not discussed his work with federal employees and “has no knowledge about how this deal came together.” A spokesperson for 1789 Capital said it played no role in securing the deal. The White House claimed that the administration, including Navarro, was “working together and with private industry to secure America’s critical mineral supply chain at Trump Speed.”

The massive loan is part of a push by the Office of Strategic Capital to secure a tighter grip on rare earth metals, the same kind used to build the Tomahawk missiles that will need to be replaced after Donald Trump’s onslaught against Iran.

This isn’t the first time the president’s son has directly financially benefited from his father’s office, but it’s the first time the White House has directly intervened to make it happen.

Eric and Don Jr. won a government contract of an unknown value after they merged their publicly traded golf course holding company with Powerus, a Florida-based drone company, with the goal of filling the gaps left by the Trump administration’s ban on Chinese drones. The brothers also co-founded World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance platform that has attracted the financial interest of foreign investors who then benefited from Trump’s policy changes.

Donald Trump’s retribution campaign is turning the Justice Department against E. Jean Carroll.

The DOJ has opened a criminal investigation into the writer, probing whether Carroll committed perjury in her previous cases against Trump, reported CNN Wednesday.

Carroll has a long and unfortunate history with the president. Trump was found liable by a jury in May 2023 for having sexually assaulted Carroll in the mid-1990s. He subsequently lost his defamation case against her the following January, when a judge ruled that Trump had continued to slander the advice columnist by denying the rape on the basis that she wasn’t his “type,” and by accusing her of making up the sexual assault allegations against him for the benefit of her book.

The American public also did not agree with Trump’s interpretation of events. Ultimately, two juries awarded Carroll $88.3 million in damages, though she hasn’t yet seen a dime. Earlier this month, a federal appeals court allowed Trump to continue staving off his payments until the Supreme Court decided whether it will pick up the case.

Yet despite the court rulings, Trump is apparently still keen to use the power of his office to punish her: The DOJ investigation will examine whether Carroll committed perjury during depositions for her civil suits, reported CNN.

The theory hinges on a 2022 deposition statement provided by the magazine columnist, in which Carroll claimed she received no outside funding for her lawsuit. That would later prove untrue, as it was revealed that billionaire Reid Hoffman—the co-founder of LinkedIn—had paid some of Carroll’s legal fees.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has been recused from the investigation into Carroll, since he was previously involved in the cases while serving as Trump’s personal attorney. Blanche, nonetheless, has played a major role in advancing Trump’s retribution campaign, placing immense pressure on the DOJ to ramp up its process against the president’s personal foes since he took the reins of the department in April.

A federal judge refused Thursday to block President Donald Trump’s executive order to illegally limit mail-in voting, clearing the way to disenfranchise millions of voters for the upcoming midterm elections.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee based in Washington, rejected the challenge from Democrats and civil rights groups. He sided with the Trump administration’s argument that it was too soon to block the order because it hadn’t actually been implemented yet.

“The Court recognizes that the Postal Service may ultimately issue a final rule that directly affects Plaintiffs or their members, or that the Government may develop State Citizenship Lists that omit specific individuals due to particularized flaws,” Nichols wrote in his ruling. “Plaintiffs may, of course, renew their motions if and when those future actions occur. Until then, however, Plaintiffs cannot show that preliminary injunctive relief is warranted.”

Trump’s executive order, signed in late March, directed that states could notify the U.S. Postal Service whether they plan to allow mail-in or absentee ballots up to 90 days before a federal election, and “should” notify the agency whether they intend to supply a list of eligible voters within 60 days of the election. The order also directed USPS to produce a set of mail-in and absentee participation lists for each state, and to refuse to deliver ballots for anyone who is not on the lists.

There is no law that requires states to provide this information to the USPS, or authorizes USPS to require states to provide that data. Trump’s order has been described by Democratic leaders as a “desperate, illegal power grab” and “laughably unconstitutional.”

A judge could still oppose Trump’s executive order as part of a separate legal challenge in Boston. But in the meantime, the way is clear for USPS to make rules that could prevent millions from voting during the upcoming midterm elections.

Democratic lawmakers have urged the Postal Service’s Board of Governors to reject Trump’s directive, as the president has no authority over the USPS, which is an independent agency only accountable to its own board of governors. Lawmakers warned that the USPS is also specifically barred from discriminating against users of the mail, and Trump’s executive order would have the agency illegally perform election administration duties.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was focused on one predominant message during Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting: resilience, resilience, resilience.

At least, that’s what his notes let on. Evan Vucci, a senior photojournalist for Reuters, snagged a shot of Bessent’s writing pad, capturing several words the treasury secretary had scrawled in front of him.

“Resilience,” Bessent wrote, with an underscore beneath it.

Bessent also jotted down “Operation Economic Fury,” referring to the economic pressure and sanctions campaign initiated by the Trump administration against the government of Iran.

In parentheses, accompanied by a check mark, Bessent wrote: “Just in time, just in case,” and then, underneath that, another mention of “resilience” and “prosperity.”

The war itself—which has so far lasted roughly 13 weeks—is costing the U.S. about $1 billion per day, according to early estimates by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. But Donald Trump’s warmongering has made life more expensive for people everywhere, due to the ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on several major oil and gas facilities.

The average cost of gas nationwide is $4.45 per gallon, with large swaths of the U.S. pushing $5 a gallon, according to the AAA’s price tracker. That’s about 50 percent higher than prices were before the war started.

Costs have also gone up for the rest of the world, a reality that has only aggravated U.S. alliances.

During the meeting, Bessent claimed that high oil costs are “transitory” and pledged that “oil will be lower than pre-conflict levels when this ends.” But the prediction came with a degree of irony, as his language echoed that of the prior administration and former Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

But a peace deal does not seem to be anywhere in sight. Iranian officials traveled to Qatar earlier this week to work out a potential end to the war, but those efforts stalled after American forces violated the ceasefire arrangement. U.S. strikes destroyed Iranian boats and missile launch sites in and around Bandar Abbas, an Iranian port city that is home to the country’s key naval and air bases.

Speaking to his Cabinet Wednesday, Trump accused Tehran of trying to “out-wait” him on the makings of a deal, pressuring him and threatening the future legislative success of his party as the midterm elections approach.

“I don’t care about the midterms, look what happened last night,” Trump said, seemingly referring to Ken Paxton, who won the Texas Republican Senate primary over incumbent Republican Senator John Cornyn.

The amount of fraud the Trump administration has packed into every aspect of its reign is honestly starting to become impressive.

Federal documents obtained by The New York Times show that the contractor assigned to renovate the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, is fleecing the feds to the tune of $13.1 million, seven times the price President Donald Trump previously said the work would cost.

A National Park Service analysis concluded that while the typical profit margin for such a job is 6 percent to 12 percent, Atlantic Industrial Coatings is getting a 20 percent profit margin for its work. This means the company is charging the government at least $850,000 more than average.

That Atlantic Industrial Coatings was even chosen in the first place is strange. This is the company’s first federal contract, and it got it without competition. In fact, the administration was in such a rush to hire Atlantic Industrial Coatings in particular that it allowed the company to start work before agreeing on the price tag. This gave the company inordinate leverage—if the government didn’t agree on the price, it could walk off, leaving Trump with a half-finished pool and no time to fix it before the nation’s 250th anniversary.

The office address for Atlantic Industrial Coatings is listed in the unincorporated area of New Canton, Virginia. Google Street View shows its headquarters as three small buildings in the middle of an endless expanse of grass. The company had zero Google reviews until Wednesday, when someone, presumably as a joke, gave the company one star.

The New Republic called the contractor’s publicly available phone number, and a representative picked up but declined to comment. “We’re not taking questions at this time,” he said.

Documents reviewed by the Times show Atlantic Industrial Coatings failed to properly seal gaps in the concrete on the floor of the pool the first two times it tried. The Interior Department declined to tell the Times whether an adequate fix had been found since then.

Unfortunately, the contract given to the Virginia builders isn’t unique. As Trump scrambles to renovate Washington, D.C., for his birthday and other summer festivities, several different companies have secured no-bid deals with the feds. And, hey, remember when a firm with ties to Kristi Noem got a $220 million no-bid contract from Trump to create an ad campaign for Kristi Noem? Where’s Nick Shirley, DOGE, and JD Vance’s anti-fraud task force when you need them?

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin is moving to have his wife, Christie, hired under a Special Government Employee, or SGE, designation—the same way former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem hired her rumored lover, Corey Lewandowski.

Recent reporting from the Daily Mail states that Mullin has been floating the idea of SGE for his wife—which would allow her to fly free with him in federal flights—“on the regular,” according to Daily Mail sources. She could make over $130,000 per year.

This publication also looked at Mullin’s flight logs, which revealed he is traveling in the same $70 million luxury Gulfstream G700 jet that Noem was criticized for using. According to the logs, he is using the G700 to fly back to his ranch in Oklahoma from Thursday to Monday, running the department from an arm’s length. In addition to retaining that jet, DHS has purchased another luxury Gulfstream G700 jet, as well as seven other planes for both private travel and deportation flights.

“Mullin was one of the people complaining when Noem ordered the new planes,” a Daily Mail source said. “But they bought all the planes that Noem recommended. No complaints all of a sudden.”

“Silence from Mullin. It has been that way for a couple of months now, and we don’t know why,” another source told the Daily Mail. “He leaves on Thursdays a lot at 11 in the morning and doesn’t fly back until Monday afternoon. He is barely in the building.”

The White House denies reports of Mullin’s absence, stating that the secretary is “very engaged with the work they do on a daily basis and works closely with the President’s entire team to make sure his agenda is being enacted.”