President Trump said on Friday that he’s yet to make a final decision on launching a military attack on Venezuela, but President Nicolás Maduro is not waiting around while taking the US leader’s word on it.

Maduro is reportedly urgently reaching out to Russia, China, and Iran for any possible military aid, including defense items which may have already been negotiated or are in the works. The Washington Post says it’s obtained internal documents showing such recent and high-stakes requests.

“Amid a buildup of American forces in the Caribbean, Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro is reaching out to Russia, China and Iran to enhance its worn military capabilities and solicit assistance, requesting defensive radars, aircraft repairs and potentially missiles, according to internal U.S. government documents obtained by The Washington Post,” the publication reports.

“The requests to Moscow were made in the form of a letter meant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and was intended to be delivered during a visit to the Russian capital by a senior aide this month,” WaPo continues.

And separately, Maduro is said to have sent a formal letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping seeking “expanded military cooperation” between the two countries in order to counter “the escalation between the U.S. and Venezuela.”

Maduro in it seeks to expedite Chinese companies’ production of radar detection systems based on prior deals, in cooperation between Caracas and Beijing which has long been an open secret.

“In the missive, Maduro emphasized the seriousness of perceived U.S. aggression in the Caribbean, framing U.S. military action against Venezuela as action against China due to their shared ideology,” the documents state according to the Post.

Transport Minister Ramón Celestino Velásquez is also reported to have sought military equipment from the Islamic Republic of Iran. He conveyed that his country needs—

• “passive detection equipment”
• “GPS scramblers”
• “drones with 1,000 km [600 mile] range”

Meanwhile the growing list of US naval assets that Maduro is facing in the Caribbean region…

As of today, the following U.S. Navy warships are in the Caribbean:

USS Iwo Jima
USS San Antonio
USS Stockdale
USS Jason Dunham
USS Gravely
USS Lake Erie
USS Wichita
USS Gettysburg

There’s also the MV Ocean Trader, a special operations vessel, and the USS Newport News, a…

— Dan Lamothe (@DanLamothe) October 31, 2025

But the reality is that despite obvious cooperation over the years – including Russian, Chinese, and Iranian military assets and personnel showing up at the occasional Venezuela military parade or state ceremony – these countries have their own problems to worry about, and are unlikely to want to poke Donald Trump at this sensitive moment in America’s “own backyard”.

With US sanctions on, and prior examples of interdictions on the high seas, even if Russia or China wanted to quickly assist Maduro as he’s under the US bullseye it could prove logistically impossible.

Brazilian authorities are seizing record amounts of cocaine moving through the Amazon as traffickers exploit expanding commercial river routes for oil and crop exports, according to Bloomberg.

In April, police chief Murilo Sampaio intercepted barges traveling from Peru’s Bretaña oil field, operated by PetroTal Corp. Drug-sniffing dogs detected a hidden compartment: “Everything was fine up until then,” Sampaio said. “But when the dogs came on board, they were able to identify a scent.” More than half a ton of cocaine was recovered and six crew members were arrested.

State data show cocaine seizures in Amazonas have roughly tripled in two years, reaching 15 tons in 2023. Security forces say that represents only a fraction of the narcotics moving east along the Solimões Route — the river network that delivers cocaine from Peru and Colombia to Brazil’s Atlantic ports and onward to Europe and Asia, as well as Brazil’s growing domestic market.

Increasing barge traffic tied to soy and oil exports has given traffickers more cover. Police say at least three major busts since mid-2023 involved barges carrying crude from the Bretaña field. PetroTal and energy trader Novum Energy say they enforce strict compliance and have “zero tolerance” for illegal activity, and authorities have not accused the companies of wrongdoing.

Bloomberg writes that gangs including the Red Command dominate much of the waterway and are expanding into remote communities, bringing violence, poaching and illegal land use. “We’re talking about hundreds of rivers,” said military police lieutenant João Maciel Rosa. “Only between 3% and 5% of the border lands… is policed.”

The surge is emerging as a diplomatic flashpoint. President Trump has made aggressive counternarcotics operations a centerpiece of his Latin America strategy, including military strikes on alleged drug boats and pressure on regional governments. Analysts say Brazil’s rising role in the cocaine trade could become leverage in other disputes, from tariffs to political disagreements. A State Department spokesperson said the U.S. is assisting Brazil “to more effectively detect and interdict these illicit activities along Brazil’s major waterways.”

As Brazil prepares to host the COP30 climate summit near the mouth of the Amazon, officials warn traffickers are embedding deeper into legitimate industries — from shipping and ports to ranching and mining. Expanded patrols and floating river bases have not stopped smugglers, who now use commercial barges, armed speedboats and semi-submersibles to avoid detection.

“It’s not tactically or operationally possible to win the war on drugs,” said analyst Andrés Preciado. “The evidence that we have after five decades is that the state doesn’t win.”

Authored by Jeremy Portnoy via RealClearInvestigations,

Topline: The City of Baltimore gave $62,500 to a nonprofit that employs the mayor’s wife, according to tax filings reviewed by the Baltimore Sun. Six members of City Council have introduced a bill that would make similar payments illegal — which the mayor opposes.

Key facts: The grant was paid in 2023 from the Baltimore Children and Youth Fund to the nonprofit Bmore Empowered, where Hana Scott is the director of operations. She is also Mayor Brandon Scott’s wife. The mayor’s office has a representative on the Youth Fund board who votes on which nonprofits receive grants.

It’s unknown whether Bmore Empowered received city funding in 2024 or 2025 because it did not file a Form 990 tax form. Britt Mittendorf, accounting school chair at Ohio State University, told the Baltimore Sun, “Regular filing of a 990 is essentially the bare minimum in terms of compliance.”

The Baltimore Sun asked the charity if they received more recent public funding, but there was no response. Hana Scott blocked reporters on LinkedIn after they messaged her with questions.

A bill currently in the City Council would place new oversight and transparency rules on the Youth Fund and has support from seven of the 15 council members. Mayor Scott opposes it because he believes it would limit funding to programs managed by his office, according to the Baltimore Sun. A spokesman from the Youth Fund claimed the increased transparency would “jeopardize” its work.

Background: Open the Books has been tracking transparency issues in Baltimore’s nonprofits for years.

Last year, 24 of the 100 nonprofits that received the most taxpayer funds from Baltimore had some issue with their state registration, including some that were legally closed. Nine of them were delinquent with the state, meaning they had not submitted proper paperwork and could not legally solicit donations.

Summary: Baltimore’s donation to Bmore Empowered is not illegal, but even the appearance of a conflict of interest can erode public trust in the management of taxpayer dollars.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

A probe into the Marxist nonprofit Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (BLMGNF), which was initially opened under the Biden-Harris administration, has seen renewed interest from federal prosecutors in President Trump’s second term over allegations that the far-left group defrauded donors.

Breaking- BLM under federal investigation for defrauding donors out of $90 million.
Hope they enjoyed the mansions while they lasted… pic.twitter.com/NeQR10aWId

— GrrrGraphics-Ben Garrison 🤠 Cartoons 🇺🇸 (@GrrrGraphics) October 30, 2025

AP News reports that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, in Los Angeles, is conducting a federal investigation into BLMGNF. Federal agents have issued subpoenas and at least one search warrant in recent weeks targeting the foundation and other affiliated groups.

Here’s more from the report:

It was not clear if the investigation would result in criminal charges, but its mere existence invites fresh scrutiny to a movement that in recent years has faced criticism about its public accounting of donations they have received. 

. . . 

One of the people said the investigation had been initiated during the Biden administration but is getting renewed attention during the Trump administration. A second person confirmed that allegations were examined in the Biden administration.

The foundation said it took in over $90 million in donations, following the 2020 murder of George Floyd…

Critics of the nonprofit foundation, and of the BLM movement broadly, accused organizers of not being transparent about how it was spending the donations. That criticism grew louder after BLM foundation leaders in 2022 confirmed they used donations to purchase a $6 million Los Angeles-area property that includes a home with six bedrooms and bathrooms.

BREAKING: The DOJ is now investigating BLM leaders for defrauding donors out of tens of millions of dollars during the 2020 riots.

They have already issued multiple subpoenas and executed at least one search warrant.

BLM co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors went on a million-dollar… pic.twitter.com/Rplo5YZ99M

— George (@BehizyTweets) October 30, 2025

Recall that left-wing BLM rioters seized on George Floyd’s death to unleash riots and chaos nationwide in 2020. The Marxist group later scrubbed from its website a section declaring its goal to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure,” in other words, the very family framework that underpins Western civilization.

“We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable,” BLM’s website formerly read.

BLM’s early beginnings are very questionable.  

According to Washington Examiner reporter Mike Gonzalez, BLM’s origins may trace back two decades to Venezuela, where a foreign influence operation was developed and later exported to the U.S. to sow domestic chaos. Wild claims, but this type of statecraft is nothing new. 

Federal scrutiny of BLMGNF comes as the White House has declared war on radical left nonprofits that conspire against the U.S. and sow chaos on city streets. 

Dark-money NGO networks, including the Arabella Network, Soros Network, Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation, Tides Foundation, Rockefeller Network, Singham Network, and many others have been hitting the headlines, including a report from investigative researchers Peter Schweizer and Seamus Bruner of the Government Accountability Institute that say these groups are funding permanent protest industrial complex and the engine behind color revolution-style operations against President Trump and MAGA.  

Rapper Lil Yachty says Black Lives Matter was a scam during a cooking show with Quenlin Blackwell.

Blackwell: “How much have you spent on charitable causes this year… BLM?”

Yachty: “BLM is a scam… BLM was literally a scam. They had bought mansions.”

Fact check:… pic.twitter.com/q6bosUkGOz

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) March 11, 2025

Back to BLMGNF, AP did not specify who the “donors” are…

Authored by Jude Clemente via RealClearEnergy,

The International Energy Agency (IEA) defines energy security as “The uninterrupted availability of energy sources at an affordable price.” In that context, no other energy sources in the world can stand against the combination of American coal and natural gas. And coming soon, utilities expect Small Modular Reactors starting as soon as 2030. 

Congressman Troy Balderson (R-OH) recently introduced “The Affordable, Reliable, Clean Energy Security Act” to ensure U.S. energy dominance and protect baseload generation with coal, natural gas, and nuclear. His ARC bill guarantees America’s most important dispatchable electricity sources remain central to the mix – a requirement to provide affordable and reliable energy for American families and businesses, all becoming more essential as the AI and data center build-out is set to explode, in a world where China is deploying domestic, low-cost coal to accomplish the exact same national security imperative. No wonder why President Trump is prioritizing dispatchable power: the data centers driving our digital economy demand constant flows of electricity, namely without interruption to prevent data loss, service disruption, and equipment damage. 

Baseload power plants serve on an around-the-clock basis, producing electricity at a consistent rate and thereby maximizing efficiency and minimizing costs. Coal and natural gas are classic baseload fuels characterized by abundance, availability, accessibility and established production, distribution and utilization systems. For example, dispatchable generation from coal and gas can be adjusted by system operators to match supply with electricity needs. Wind and solar, on the other hand, as defined by Rep. Balderson, have “intermittent availability” and are weather dependent sources whose production is contigent on the availability of the resource – the wind and the sun. The physical reality is that the U.S. Department of Energy has long defined wind and solar as, naturally, “non-dispatchable.” Moreover, there is solid evidence that once these renewables reach a certain proportion of the grid, reliability is at risk – e.g. the April 2025 widespread power outages in Spain and Portugal.

In an electricity system, “capacity value” refers to the estimated contribution of an energy resource to the system’s ability to meet peak demand and maintain reliability. Essentially, can installed capacity be counted on during times of peak demand? How much of a plant’s capacity is available when the system needs it most? Rolling and Orr have demonstrated how system planners recognize the capacity value limitations of wind and solar. As our largest power market serving 65 million Americans, PJM Planners, for example, assign an expected capacity value to coal at 80% and gas at about 75% through 2035. In sharp contrast, PJM sees the value of onshore wind declining from 41% in 2027 to only 19% in 2035 and solar never even reaching 10% in the next decade.

What this ultimately means is that wind and solar are more often “unavailable” than “available” to deploy and thus simply not possible to be the foundation for a PJM forecasting that from 2025 to 2045 winter peak power demand will soar by nearly 65%, with summer peak rising 50%. Our “greenest” state is California, having done all that it can to “get off fossil fuels” with renewables for decades, yet gas still generated nearly 60% of the state’s power on some days in September. Clearly more “supplemental” than “alternative,” PJM explains the intermittency problem and limited outlook for renewables: 

“The ratings for the two wind classes decrease significantly due to… winter historical performance patterns” … The ratings for the two solar classes remain stable at low values during the entire period.”  

Serving 45 million Americans, MISO is the electric grid operator for the central U.S., ensuring power flows reliably and affordably across 15 states and Manitoba. MISO system planners present a similar warning relating to the capacity value of wind and solar vis-a vis coal and natural gas: “dispatchable thermal resources, such as natural gas and coal, are forecast to provide a much larger fraction of the region’s total needed accredited capacity compared to wind and solar, which have significantly lower accreditation values due to their weather dependent nature.” 

Consider, for example, the 2025 Polar Vortex which pushed the U.S. power grid to unprecedented levels of demand. In response, grid operators relied heavily on dispatchable generation from coal and natural gas to ensure system reliability and stabilize supply. Wind and solar were challenged due to “unfavorable weather conditions.” On the peak day, wind and solar were only able to generate 3% and 0.2% of the incremental electricity needed. In contrast, coal and gas provided 66% of electricity during the Vortex. With climate change making our weather even less predictable, heavy reliance on weather dependent resources pose obvious problems. We continue to see the really bad consequences of retiring too much coal, too quickly, all as our power needs are starting to rise again. Experts at Power the Future warn of “a looming electricity affordability crisis,” and it is exactly why Rep. Balderson has also called for “Restoring American Coal Dominance.”

In terms of affordability, Rolling and Orr analyzed the cost of power from existing thermal power plants in the MISO region and found the cost of coal per Megawatt Hour as $37.45 and natural gas as $38.14. In comparison, the cost of New Wind is $46.30 and solar is $71.21. They note that these numbers should hardly be surprising. The existing coal and gas plants are more affordable because they have already paid off most of their initial capital costs, and utilities no longer earn much in the way of a rate of return on these depreciated assets. Thus, existing coal and gas plants are typically the most reliable and least expensive plants in the power system.  

Troy Balderson has proposed legislation which would provide American consumers with the affordable and reliable energy necessary for the nation to meet its electrification aspirations – especially in regard to data centers. As a reminder, electrification (i.e., much more electricity demand) itself is cited by green groups as critical to reducing emissions and fighting climate change. Flat really since 2008, annual U.S. electricity needs are set to rise by more than 50% over the next decade, to well over 6,000 terrawatt hours. While wind and solar surely offer good value in certain locations and at certain times, our required backbone for booming power needs remains obvious: dispatchable power from coal and gas provides consistent energy supply, supports grid stability, and enhances energy security. 

Jude Clemente is the Editor at RealClearEnergy.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

US War Department officials don’t know the identities of the 61 people who have been extra-judicially executed in US military strikes on boats in the waters near Venezuela and in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, Politico reported on Thursday, citing House Democrats who attended a classified briefing on the campaign.

“[The department officials] said that they do not need to positively identify individuals on these vessels to do the strikes, they just need to prove a connection to smuggling,” said Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA). “When we tried to get more information, we did not get satisfactory answers.”

While the Trump administration has cited overdose deaths in the US related to fentanyl to justify the bombing campaign, lawmakers were told in the briefing that the boats that have been targeted were allegedly smuggling cocaine, though the Pentagon has not provided evidence to back up its claims about what the vessels were carrying.

“They argued that cocaine is a facilitating drug of fentanyl, but that was not a satisfactory answer for most of us,” Jacobs said.

The briefing on Thursday came after the Pentagon shut out Democrats from another briefing it held with Republicans a day earlier, which left Democratic senators fuming. Democrats who attended Thursday’s briefing said Pentagon lawyers were pulled from the meeting at the last minute.

“Am I leaving satisfied? Absolutely not. And the last word that I gave to the admiral was, ‘I hope you recognize the constitutional peril that you are in and the peril you are putting our troops in,’” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) told reporters after the briefing, according to CNN.

Jacobs said that, based on what she was told, even if Congress authorized the bombing campaign, it would still be illegal. “[T]here’s nothing that we heard in there that changes my assessment that this is completely illegal, that it is unlawful and even if Congress authorized it, it would still be illegal because there are extrajudicial killings where we have no evidence,” she said.

Criticism of the US bombing campaign has also come from Republicans, most prominently from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). “No one said their name, no one said what evidence, no one said whether they’re armed, and we’ve had no evidence presented,” Paul said this week of the people who have been targeted. “They summarily execute people without presenting evidence to the public… so it’s wrong.”

Paul has joined Senate Democrats in introducing a War Powers Resolution aimed at preventing the Trump administration from starting a war with Venezuela amid threats of US strikes on the country aimed at ousting President Nicolas Maduro and a major US military buildup in the region. A vote on the bill is expected to happen next week.

A very interesting moment played out earlier this week when Vice President JD Vance spoke at a Turning Point USA event at the University of Mississippi. Vance during the Wednesday visit was asked by a student wearing a MAGA hat why the US is so constantly devoted to Israel, handing it billions of dollars to support what the student described as “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza.

Vance seemed ready and willing to field the tough question, which is representative of a shift on Israel among especially young conservatives. Vance in responding revealed that United States had used its “leverage” to persuade Israel to accept a ceasefire agreement in Gaza.

“The most recent Gaza peace plan that all of us have been working on very hard for the past few weeks — the president of the United States could only get that peace deal done by actually being willing to apply leverage to the State of Israel,” the vice president described.

“When people say that Israel is somehow manipulating or controlling the President of the United States, they’re not controlling this President of the United States,” he added.

Not only does this mark the first public indication from a top American official that Washington exerted (perhaps unprecedented) pressure on Netanyahu to reach a deal, but Vance strongly suggested that in his view Israel has manipulated and ‘controlled’ past presidents (given his curious wording of “they’re not controlling this President of the United States”).

Part of Vance’s defense of Trump’s policy included the explanation that “America First” foreign policy does not mean rejecting all alliances or cooperation with other nations, but that this can be approached pragmatically, and leverage can at times be exerted based on the relationship. He acknowledged in responding to the student that “sometimes Israel’s interests align with those of the United States, and sometimes they don’t,” and that Washington must then act accordingly.

Student to JD Vance at TPUSA event: Why do we have to give Israel billions of dollars to support, to quote Charlie Kirk, this “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza? pic.twitter.com/C9ud246G17

— Chris Menahan 🇺🇸 (@infolibnews) October 30, 2025

It’s no secret that the Trump presidency has been backed by billionaire pro-Israel interests, including AIPAC (which is no doubt influential on both sides of the aisle), and Trump himself has openly joked about this. Earlier this month while in Israel he even awkwardly alluded to Miriam Adelson, one of his single biggest donors, who he suggested cares more about Israel than the United States.

There’s also ample evidence going all the way back to 2016 that Trump’s approach to the Israel-Palestinian conflict would be guided more by pragmatism and not simply Zionist ideology. Yet he’s also boasted time and again he’s done more for Israel than any other US president in history, which has included recognition of Israeli sovereignty over Syria’s Golan Heights, as well as moving the US embassy to Jerusalem – as part of historic recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Fuentes on the young Right moving away from the historic Republican pro-Israel stance: “That’s the groyper squeeze. Now THIS is politics.”

Nick Fuentes warns he will cost JD Vance the 2028 election if he sides with israel first over America Firsters

“Cross that red line, and we will be your worst enemy politically.” pic.twitter.com/kkzF14fZqD

— 𝐆𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐝𝐮𝐬 (@ImperiumFirst) October 31, 2025

What the Vance explanation at the Turning Point event also signifies is perhaps a new frankness and openness about discussing America’s so-called ‘greatest ally in the Middle East’. Republicans have long campaigned on demonstrating their devotion to Israel, but times could be changing if Vance is boasting that the Trump administration is keeping Bibi in line on the ceasefire, also as the American Right is slowly shifting, especially among the youth. The Trump era perhaps represents a new willingness to aggressively criticize Israel, a historic taboo and rarity in conservative circles.

In a stark irony, Iran has condemned and lashed out at President Trump’s call to return the United States to nuclear weapons testing “on an equal basis” with other countries like Russia and China.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called out the move as both “regressive” and “irresponsible”. Iran has of course remained under harsh and expansive US-led sanctions over its nuclear program, which has involved no warheads or other testing, and which Tehran has long insisted is only for peaceful nuclear energy purposes.

“Having rebranded its ‘Department of Defense’ as the ‘Department of War,’ a nuclear-armed bully is resuming testing of atomic weapons,” Araghchi wrote on X late Thursday.

“The same bully has been demonizing Iran’s peaceful nuclear program and threatening further strikes on our safeguarded nuclear facilities, all in blatant violation of international law,” he said.

Trump’s surprise announcement on Truth Social came earlier that same day just before meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

The has media widely assumed that Trump just ordered explosives tests of nuclear warheads, which hasn’t been done by the US since 1992. But the reality is that Trump’s wording was ambiguous enough to also mean simply the testing of nuclear delivery weapons and not detonating bombs themselves.

Moon of Alabama astutely points out that A Nuclear Delivery Vehicle Is Not A Nuclear War Head:

However Trumps next sentence is not about testing nuclear warheads. It is about testing of carrier systems that can deploy nuclear warheads.

Trump says: “Because of other countries testing programs,…”

No country has recently exploded a nuclear bomb or warhead for testing or other purposes. The last known nuclear test was done by North Korea in 2017.

It is important to distinguish between testing a carrier designed to deliver a nuclear war head and testing, i.e. exploding, the nuclear war head itself. A nuclear carrier can be a bomber, a land based (intercontinental) missile or a submarine based missile or torpedo.

Still, this is how the world is interpreting it, given The Washington Post and many others gave it precisely that meaning. But given Trump was aiming all of this at Russia to condemn its own tests within the last week of no less than two cutting-edge nuclear delivery weapons, the ambiguity is perhaps intentional and having its effect.

As for Iran, despite the June war and the at this point total and official end of the JCPOA, it is unlikely to give up its nuclear program. After being attacked by Israel and Washington, with its nuke sites heavily bombed, it likely feels more incentivized than ever to achieve nuclear weapons, or other capable WMD deterrent.

Authored by Yael Ossowski via RealClearPolitics,

Among political conservatives, there is no hotter potato at the moment than the civil liability protections afforded by Section 230 to online operators. Unless Republicans learn to love it again and reject the censorship lawfare complex favored by Democrats, they risk dooming our tech leaders and everyone who uses their products to the sharks circling our legal system.

The twenty-six words tucked into the Communications Decency Act of 1996 shielded publishers from liability so they could host and moderate content and still allow a wide range of speech without fear of lawsuits. Since then, Section 230 has evolved to be one of the most powerful legal shields in the nation against civil litigation in U.S. courts. This gave the early digital economy the guardrails it needed to thrive by incentivizing creatives and disruptors to bring their big ideas to life.

Nothing ices a good idea like the fear of a lawsuit.

Yet, to be a rising star in the Republican Party today conveys some kind of fealty to the idea that Section 230 is antiquated – a relic of the early Internet that has outlasted its usefulness.

Last month, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) called on his colleagues to “fully repeal Section 230” to cut the knees of AI companies and thwart their LLM training models. “Open the courtroom doors. Allow people to sue who have their rights taken from them, including suing companies and actors and individuals who use AI,” said Hawley.

He’s joined in these efforts by fellow Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Marsha Blackburn, not to mention Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin and Amyâ?¯Klobuchar.

According to the Section 230 Legislation Tracker maintained by Lawfare and the Center on Technology Policy at UNC-Chapel Hill, there have already been 41 separate bills aimed at curbing some aspects of the law by both Democrats and Republicans in the last two sessions.

The principal motivation for Democrats, including former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, has always been to force censorship of social media platforms to stop “disinformation,” a pretext for muting opposing views. The coordination of Democratic officials pressuring platforms to censor, as revealed in the Twitter Files, proves this beyond dispute.

To highlight the irony, we should remember that President Donald Trump is not only the chief executive of the United States, but also the owner of a social media platform that currently enjoys broad Section 230 protections afforded to any online publisher.

A wish to cripple Section 230 means making Truth Social a target as much as YouTube or Instagram. We should harbor no illusions that right-leaning media publications, podcasters, and websites would be the first to be kneecapped in a post-Section 230 world. Can MAGA and the GOP swallow that pill?

In that scenario, it will be the millions of Americans who currently enjoy freedom of speech online that will lose out. It’s the tens of millions of Americans turning to AI tools to become more productive, create value, and build the next great economic engines of our time who will be harmed by dismantling Section 230.

If Republicans want to cement American dominance in technological innovation, they will have to abandon this devil’s dance on gutting Section 230 liability protections. This is a censorship trap laid by Democrats to benefit them once they return to power.

The premise of broad civil liability protection for platforms is a core principle that has and should be applied to producers across America’s innovative stack, whether it’s oil and gas firms fending off dubious climate cases or artificial intelligence firms building the tools that are the key to America’s present economic dominance.

For one, Republicans should follow the lead of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who has rightly intimated that Section 230 likely applies to AI chatbots where many Americans are now getting their information. Legislation to further clarify this would alleviate thousands of hours of courtroom battles and millions awarded to plaintiff attorneys, all too keen to make their millions suing AI companies.

Forcing platforms to spend their time fending off trial lawyers circling their offices will not only hasten censorship on American internet platforms, but it will also require it. There is no business model for online connection with liability protection removed.

If Section 230 falls and every online dispute is dragged into court, it won’t be Big Tech that pays the price – it will be Americans whose speech and livelihoods hang in the balance.

Yaël Ossowski is deputy director of the Consumer Choice Center, a global consumer advocacy group.