Authored by Jonathan Turley,

The House Oversight Committee is investigating the use of the autopen by Biden officials as allegations grow that President Joe Biden had little idea of some of the actions taken under his name, from executive orders to pardons. Now, the Committee has disclosed that at least one senior official warned that he had “no idea” what the parameters were for Biden’s blanket pardons and that the public was being misled about the pardons only applying to non-violent individuals.

Associate Deputy Attorney General Brad Weinsheimer told the Office of White House Counsel they needed an additional statement from the President as to his intent and the scope of the pardon:

“I think the language ‘offenses described to the Department of Justice’ in the warrant is highly problematic and in order to resolve its meaning appropriately, and consistent with the President’s intent, we will need a statement or direction from the President as to how to interpret the language…I have no idea what interpretation the incoming Administration will give to the warrant, but they may find this interpretation attractive, as it gives effect to the language but does not go beyond the four corners of the warrant.”

So, at least for this senior Justice Department official, it was not just Biden who may have had little idea of what pardons were being issued under his name. The confusion was shared by implementing attorneys. That is a serious problem in the use of this presidential power by unseen, unnamed staff members.

Weinsheimer also flagged how even the stated intent of Biden in barring violent individuals was being disregarded due to the ill-defined criteria:

“One other important note – in communication about the commutations, the White House has described those who received commutations as people convicted of non-violent drug offenses. I think you should stop saying that because it is untrue or at least misleading… As you know, even with the exceedingly limited review we were permitted to do of the individuals we believed you might be considering for commutation action, we initially identified 19 that were highly problematic.”

House Oversight Chairman James Comer is pursuing this investigation despite opposition from Democratic members and, of course, many in the media. Yet, there is mounting evidence that Biden was clueless on major decisions made in his Administration, including signing a major executive order on natural gas exports. In this latest controversy, a veteran Justice official did not have a clue about the scope of the pardons as staff members just compiled lists of people whom they wanted to include in the presidential order.

What is particularly disconcerting is how accountability for any abuse is made more difficult by the large number of staff contributing to these lists and lack of clearly defined decision makers.  With Biden abdicating his own responsibility, staffers were allowed to effectively add names to a signed blank page, exercising a presidential power with the level of circumspection of an inter-office memo.

President Trump’s new hemispheric defense strategy, stretching across North, Central, and South America, now includes the deployment of 4,000 troops and three guided-missile destroyers positioned in international waters off Venezuela, as part of a broader campaign to dismantle command-and-control hubs of narco-terrorists and purge Chinese-linked drug and money-laundering networks from the region. 

Last week, the Pentagon positioned three Aegis guided-missile destroyers (the USS Gravely, USS Jason Dunham, and USS Sampson) directly off the coast of Venezuela as new force posturing takes hold in the region, with the Pentagon’s crosshairs focused on narco-terrorists fueling America’s drug death crisis that claims 100,000 lives per year. 

Simultaneously, attention turns to Canada, which, like Mexico and other surrounding countries, remains a very weak partner in the region as the Trump administration advances its hemispheric defense strategy to clean up the Americas ahead of the 2030s. Trump’s cleanup of the Western hemisphere is almost comparable to his micro efforts to restore law and order in crime-ridden Washington, D.C. – and soon, in many other cities nationwide left in ruins by failed Democratic leadership that allowed violent crime and open-air drug markets to flourish. 

Sam Cooper of the investigative outlet The Bureau has uncovered in recent years that North America’s fentanyl crisis is not just a drug death crisis wiping out military-aged men and women by the hundreds of thousands – it’s also a sprawling international money-laundering machine, run through Chinese Triads, Mexican cartels, and Canadian financial networks in a massive transnational crime web that fuels the crisis. Some view this operation to subvert Washington as Chinese irregular warfare, explained here.

Cooper’s work, as we’ve covered in recent years, spans Chinese narcos using laundering networks via TD bank and other Canadian financial institutions to “Breaking Bad-style” superlabs in Canada to all things China subverting the Americas… 

• Chinese Narcos In Toronto Run “Command & Control” Fentanyl Laundering Network Used In TD Bank Case: U.S. Investigator

• Canadian Banks Linked To Chinese Fentanyl Laundering Risk U.S. Treasury Sanctions After Cartel Terror Designation

• Busted Fentanyl Super Lab In Canada Makes “Breaking Bad Look Minor League”: Former Trump Official

• Chinese Intel-Linked Bankers Reportedly Fundraised For L.A. Mayor Karen Bass

• Brookfield’s Deep Ties To Chinese Land, Loans & Green Deals

Cooper’s latest report focuses on how Canada’s federal police (RCMP) refused to cooperate with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 2022 on a probe into a British Columbia fentanyl “superlab” tied to Chinese precursor shipments. It was only after the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Iranian-Canadian businessman Bahman Djebelibak and his Health Canada–licensed Valerian Labs that the RCMP belatedly launched its own investigation, without sharing critical information with the U.S. Gov’t. 

The superlab in Falkland, B.C. was eventually raided and dismantled, with investigations suggesting the lab was able to produce drugs on an industrial scale:

• Drugs: 54kg fentanyl (95 million lethal doses), 390kg meth, 35kg cocaine, 15kg MDMA.

Last year, Derek Maltz, Acting DEA Administrator, commented on the botched RCMP investigation, blasting the RCMP: “The way they conducted business was disgusting, honestly. We can’t have that kind of activity when our countries are being attacked at levels we’ve never seen.”

Former current and senior U.S. officials told Cooper that Ottawa’s problem isn’t just incompetence – it’s structural. Weak, antiquated laws. It appears politics paralyze leadership, and corruption runs all the way to the top.

Meanwhile, the investigation into the Falkland raid was a dark reality: Chinese underground bankers in Vancouver and Toronto move hundreds of millions through Canadian and U.S. banks, laundering cartel money and financing fentanyl labs. None of this is new, but what is, in the era of Trump, will all be dismantled.

Fast forward today, Ottawa has learned the hard way with a tariff war with Trump, following years of inaction and botched investigations into fentanyl superlabs in its country that fuel America’s drug death crisis. 

Here’s an excerpt of Cooper’s latest report:

Canada’s federal police refused to investigate or cooperate with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration on a British Columbia fentanyl superlab probe tied to chemical-precursor shipments from China into Vancouver in late 2022, according to senior U.S. officials. More than a year later — only after the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Iranian-Canadian businessman Bahman Djebelibak and his Health Canada–licensed company Valerian Labs, naming them as part of a Chinese fentanyl trafficking syndicate that Washington sought to disrupt — did the RCMP finally open a siloed investigation. The force continued to refuse coordination or information sharing with the American agents who had initiated the case. In an exclusive interview, Derek Maltz, DEA Acting Administrator in 2025 with oversight of the matter, called the B.C. superlab case a “major disaster.”

This explosive information, confirmed to The Bureau by current and former senior U.S. officials, has never before been reported in the Falkland, B.C., superlab case, which was covered internationally by outlets including The New York Times. It amounts to a rare public rebuke that elevates the matter from a Canadian policing failure into a high-consequence geopolitical dispute.

It also helps explain Washington’s decision on July 31 to impose 35 percent tariffs on Canada, reinforcing President Donald Trump’s claim that senior officials had warned him Ottawa failed to cooperate or devote sufficient resources to interdictions against Chinese- and Mexican-linked drug trafficking networks blamed for killing hundreds of thousands of North Americans. Three weeks ago, in a statement underscoring intelligence tied to the Falkland lab case, the White House said: “Mexican cartels are increasingly operating fentanyl labs in Canada.” It added: “Canada-based drug trafficking organizations maintain robust ‘super labs,’ mostly in rural and dense areas in western Canada, some of which can produce 44 to 66 pounds of fentanyl weekly.”

‘A major disaster on that big lab in British Columbia’

In multiple interviews with senior officials — including Derek Maltz, who retired this year after Mexico carried out an unprecedented wave of extraditions of dozens of cartel leaders to the United States — The Bureau confirmed devastating details of the Falkland superlab in British Columbia, hidden in mountainous terrain between Vancouver and Calgary. The case became public only in October 2024 — to the surprise of DEA investigators — when the RCMP announced it had dismantled what it called the most sophisticated drug laboratory ever uncovered in Canada, capable of producing up to 95 million potentially lethal doses of fentanyl. Investigators seized a staggering half-ton of narcotics: 54 kilograms of fentanyl, 390 kilos of methamphetamine, 35 kilos of cocaine, 15 kilos of MDMA, smaller amounts of cannabis, and large quantities of precursor chemicals from China. Police estimated the street value at about $500 million.

The raid also exposed the militarized posture of Mexican cartel–style operations, with 89 firearms — including handguns, AR-15-style rifles and submachine guns, many loaded — along with explosive devices, ammunition, silencers, high-capacity magazines, body armor, and roughly $500,000 in cash. So far, only a man named Gaganpreet Singh Randhawa, believed to be a lower level suspect, has been charged after the RCMP’s raid on the Falkland lab and related Vancouver-area properties. What Ottawa failed to share with Canadians, U.S. sources say, is that the DEA’s Newark, New Jersey office had already delivered the case to Canadian authorities through the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa nearly two years earlier — warning of precursor shipments tied to Djebelibak’s company, Valerian Labs. Canadian police, the officials said, not only declined to cooperate but also delayed launching their own siloed probe until after Washington imposed sanctions on Djebelibak in October 2023.

“The way they conducted business was disgusting, honestly,” Maltz said in an August 2025 interview. “And we can’t have that kind of activity when our countries are being attacked at levels that we’ve never seen in the history of our countries.”

Maltz, who limited his remarks to high-level confirmations, agreed with numerous other U.S. officials interviewed by The Bureau that the Falkland breakdown was neither isolated nor new — but part of a recurring pattern of refusal and delay in Ottawa’s dealings with American law enforcement.

“Over the years, we’ve had historical issues with the RCMP not sharing properly, and most recently there was a major disaster that happened on that big lab in British Columbia,” Maltz confirmed.

“The superlab was part of some ongoing stuff going on with DEA New Jersey. There was a major frustration with the DEA agents in the United States that had investigative equity and investigative knowledge on this particular case. And we were trying to share and cooperate. And it was a major problem.”

Like other senior U.S. experts interviewed by The Bureau this year regarding Canada’s increasing exploitation by Chinese and Mexican fentanyl networks, Maltz said Ottawa’s repeated inability to investigate and prosecute major drug trafficking and money laundering networks — and its frequent refusal to cooperate with international allies — stems from a combination of weak, outdated laws and ineffective leadership.

Other U.S. and Canadian police experts also warned they believe the RCMP and relevant Canadian agencies such as Canada Border Services suffer from significant corruption concerns.

“It goes down to the basic information sharing, the antiquated laws, that people are not stepping up and not leading the efforts,” Maltz said of the Falkland lab case. “When I was Acting Administrator, I met with the current leadership and it was actually sad because these guys came to see me and they want to do the right thing. They say all the right things, but they’re so far behind and the laws are so antiquated and so archaic.”

In an interview, Donald Im, who retired in 2022 after a long career as a senior DEA official, described the synthetic narcotics overdose crisis in North America — fueled by Chinese Communist Party chemical suppliers and cartel distribution networks — as a “slow motion, weapons of mass destruction that exposes the vulnerability of whole nations and regions.”

As part of the DEA’s Special Operations Division, Im oversaw sprawling investigations into global Chinese money laundering systems and fentanyl precursor supply chains. He said he provided support to the New Jersey DEA probes that became a linchpin of the agency’s strategy and indirectly tied into the Falkland superlab case. These investigations exposed how Chinese underground bankers — often operating from Vancouver and Toronto — were moving staggering nine-figure flows — in some cases, hundreds of millions within months — through U.S. and Canadian financial institutions, as well as through international trade routes between China, Mexico, Canada, and South America, to sustain the fentanyl trade.

Those innovative cases, Im said, connected Chinese laundering networks across North America to an extraordinarily wide array of actors, demonstrating that seemingly local probes connected to the same global syndicates moving precursors from China, laundering through Canadian and U.S. banks, and producing fentanyl on an industrial scale in hidden labs across Canada.

Im added, in his opinion: “If only one person was arrested in that sophisticated Falkland laboratory? It is either the RCMP is incompetent or, politically, they’ve been neutered.”

That assessment is supported by previous case studies. Another source for this story — deeply troubled by the RCMP and Canadian prosecutors’ decisions not to pursue major targets uncovered in probes of drug-laundering networks tied to Chinese, Iranian, and Mexican syndicates — said they learned the RCMP, while conducting a major investigation into Iranian state-linked drug launderers in Toronto and Montreal, stumbled onto a Chinese suspect moving $600 million in just six months. Yet when briefed, the DEA was told the RCMP would not pursue the case, citing a different investigative focus.

We reached out to the RCMP. They said “No”

While Derek Maltz spoke only at a high level about Washington’s concerns with Ottawa’s handling of the Falkland case, another U.S. official provided a more detailed account of the behind-the-scenes drama between American and Canadian agencies.

The U.S. government source, who had direct knowledge of the case and requested anonymity due to ongoing investigations, said that in late 2022 the DEA’s Newark, New Jersey office alerted colleagues at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa to precursor shipments from China bound for Valerian Labs, Inc., a Port Coquitlam–based company owned by Bahman Djebelibak, publicly known as “Bobby Shah” … 

The rest of the report can be viewed on The Bureau’s Substack… 

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

He might hypothetically agree that the resumption of NATO’s present support for Ukraine (arms, intelligence, logistics, etc.) in the event of another conflict wouldn’t cross Russia’s red lines but he’s unlikely to compromise on the issue of Western troops in Ukraine once the present conflict ends.

Steve Witkoff’s claim that Putin allegedly agreed to the US offering Ukraine “Article 5-like protection” during the Anchorage Summit, which Trump repeated during his White House Summit with Zelensky and a handful of European leaders, raises the question of what form this could hypothetically take if true. Assuming for the sake of analysis that he did indeed agree to this, it’s important to clarify exactly what Article 5 entails. For starters, it doesn’t obligate allies to dispatch troops if one of them is attacked.

Per the North Atlantic Treaty, each member only has to take “such action as it deems necessary”, which could include “the use of armed forces” but doesn’t have to. As was explained earlier this year here, “Ukraine has arguably enjoyed the benefits of this principle for the past three years despite not being a NATO member since it’s received everything other than troops from the alliance.” Arms, intelligence, logistical, and other forms of support have already been provided to Ukraine in the spirit of Article 5.

It might therefore be the case that Putin agreed that such “Article 5-like protection” could be resumed in the event of another conflict without crossing Russia’s red lines. Although Russia objects to Ukraine’s remilitarization after the present conflict ends, it’s possible that it could agree to this too as part of a grand compromise in exchange for some of its other goals being met as explained here. What Russia doesn’t agree to, however, is the dispatch of Western troops to Ukraine after the present conflict ends.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova declared on the day of the White House Summit that “We reiterate our long-standing position of unequivocally rejecting any scenarios involving the deployment of NATO military contingents in Ukraine”. This position isn’t expected to change since one of the reasons behind the special operation is to stop NATO’s expansion inside Ukraine. Western boots on the ground there afterwards would therefore amount to the perceived failure of Russia’s primary goal.

This would especially be the case if they’re deployed along the Line of Contact, but their deployment west of the Dnieper in parallel with the creation of a demilitarized “Trans-Dnieper” region controlled by non-Western peacekeepers as proposed here could hypothetically be a compromise. That said, Russia would prefer for there to only be non-Western peacekeepers, if any at all. The deployment of foreign military forces, regardless of the country, could embolden Ukraine to stage false-flag provocations.

To summarize, in the order of the most hypothetically acceptable Western security guarantees to Ukraine to the least hypothetically acceptable from Russia’s perspective, these are:

1) the resumption of Western support for Ukraine only if another conflict erupts and without any peacekeepers at all;

2) continued Western support but with non-Western peacekeepers;  and

3) continued Western support, Western troops west of the Dnieper, and non-Western troops in a demilitarized “Trans-Dnieper” region.

The scope of Ukraine’s demilitarization and the extent of Western security guarantees to it after the present conflict ends are of the utmost importance for Russia in order to prevent Ukraine from once again being weaponized as a launchpad for Western aggression. It’s therefore highly unlikely that Russia will compromise much on this issue, especially the scenario of Western troops in Ukraine. Russia might be more flexible on other issues, but on this one, it might prove unwavering.

The economics of football are shifting, and fans are feeling the squeeze. According to new research from FinanceBuzz, the cost of attending an NFL game has climbed dramatically over the last decade, with tickets, concessions, and parking all contributing to the rising price tag.

On average, it now costs $158 per person to attend a game in 2024 — up 40% since 2014. That’s higher than the overall U.S. inflation rate of 32% in the same period.

The steepest jump belongs to the Detroit Lions, whose average game-day cost ballooned from $92 in 2014 to $277 in 2024 — a 201% increase. Lions fans may not have had much to celebrate a decade ago, but with the team emerging as a Super Bowl contender, demand has driven prices to the top of the league.

The Las Vegas Raiders rank second, with costs rising 178% after the team’s move from Oakland into a flashy new Las Vegas stadium. Other big increases include the Buffalo Bills (105%), Miami Dolphins (103%), Los Angeles Rams (98%), Cincinnati Bengals (97%), and Philadelphia Eagles (95%).

Not all fans are paying more. The New Orleans Saints saw costs fall by 41% since 2014, while prices dropped 20% for the Arizona Cardinals and 12% for the New England Patriots, partly thanks to the Patriots introducing free parking in 2023.

Beer prices are also surging. The Washington Commanders raised their 16-ounce beer price from $6.55 in 2014 to $16.49 in 2024 — a 152% increase and the sharpest in the league. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers (137%) and Los Angeles Rams (133%) also more than doubled beer costs, fueled by Super Bowl wins and a new stadium.

Looking ahead, FinanceBuzz reports that 2025–2026 ticket prices could climb even higher. Early SeatGeek data shows the Philadelphia Eagles’ home opener starting at $538, the most expensive in the NFL, with the Detroit Lions and Chicago Bears also among the priciest. On the low end, the New Orleans Saints and Carolina Panthers have some of the cheapest opening-day tickets.

For fans, the rising costs mean game-day budgeting has become as important as the action on the field. FinanceBuzz suggests strategies like buying tickets closer to kickoff on the secondary market, using cash-back or travel credit cards to offset expenses, and exploring streaming options for games at home.

With half the league raising prices faster than inflation and some teams tripling their costs in just 10 years, one thing is clear: NFL success isn’t just measured in wins anymore — it’s also reflected in fans’ wallets.

You can read FinanceBuzz’s full study here. 

Authored by Andrew Doyle via DailySceptic.org,

One of the curious aspects of moving from the UK to the US is adjusting to the everyday cultural differences. There’s the tipping, the peculiar phrases (waiters often say ‘I appreciate you’ rather than ‘thank you’), and the kind of generalised politeness from strangers that in London I would naturally treat with suspicion. For me, one of the most notable variations has been the unabashed patriotism. The Stars and Stripes is a common sight, fluttering above public buildings, as bunting on shops, and from huge flagpoles erected along the highway. It’s almost as though these people are actually proud of their country.

In the UK, by contrast, the national flag has long been distrusted. Some view it as a symbol of racism and the legacy of empire, but more often it evokes a kind of embarrassment, as if patriotism itself were a form of bad manners. This week the Labour-run council in Birmingham ordered the removal of British and English flags from lamp posts, claiming that such “unauthorised attachments” can be “dangerous”. At the same time, Palestinian flags are flown with impunity throughout the UK, and many suspect that the police are too frightened to take them down.

The backlash against Birmingham council has become an unexpected flashpoint in the culture wars, with locals in various towns and cities now hoisting the flags of the Union and St George in defiance. The movement has been dubbed ‘Operation Raise the Colours’, spreading rapidly to London, Bradford, Newcastle, Norwich, Swindon and beyond.

Inevitably, woke activists see the British flag as threatening and “unsafe”, a declaration of support for colonialism and slavery, as though a nation’s flag can only possibly represent the worst aspects of its history. These same activists do not seem to baulk at the raising of the Progress Pride flag in public, in spite of the fact that this design is associated with the mutilation of children, the destruction of women’s spaces and the rolling back of gay rights.

The hypocrisy has been particularly obvious in areas such as Tower Hamlets, a council that has consistently displayed the Palestine flag, but has now said that any UK equivalent will not be tolerated. But why should the national flag be considered controversial in any area of the country it represents? In military terms, it is unthinkable to allow a flag to fall, because that is to suggest surrender or defeat. But in places like Tower Hamlets, the concept of raising it in the first place seems anathema.

Of course, all of this comes down to what the flag signifies. To many, the Union flag serves as a rallying point, binding people to shared values within one nation. To others, it is a symbol of dominance and jingoistic supremacy. But the same could surely be said of the Palestinian flag. While some will argue that it is a show of solidarity for a cause, in many cases it appears to function less as a unifying symbol than as a political provocation, aimed at alienating those who dissent from its message.

Take for instance the example of Labour donor and entrepreneur Dale Vince, who is currently displaying an oversized 30-foot-long Palestinian flag outside his office in Stroud. He had previously hung the European Union flag at the same spot. For Vince, flags are not simply a means of declaring his political affiliations. They are also instruments for his culture war; a way to hammer home his point of view while goading his Cotswold neighbours in the process.

I have had some personal experience of how flags can be used to promote dissent rather than unity. When I was at university, my mother moved to a house in the Brandywell area of the city of Derry in Northern Ireland, not far from where she grew up. In the surrounding roads there were plenty of Irish Tricolours painted onto walls, and even some of the kerbstones were decorated in the green, white and gold. You could argue that this was all in celebration of Irish culture, but of course these were really territorial markings, a way to ensure that Unionists knew they were not welcome. In turn, the nearby Fountain Estate was plastered with the colours of the UK flag, and remains so to this day.

I recall one holiday break from university which happened to coincide with a World Cup, an event I had no interest in whatsoever. Directly outside my bedroom window, someone had attached a Brazilian flag to the lamp post. This was apparently because the English team were soon due to play Brazil, and so this was a relatively harmless – and quite humorous – means of expressing anti-English sentiment in this fiercely republican area of the city. But I do wonder what would have happened to me had I attempted to take it down?

This is perhaps why for a long while I have associated flags with division rather than unity, but my recent experiences in America have altered my view. Here, the flag is not an act of aggression but of fellowship, not a means of exclusion but a way to forge a common identity. That attitude has never taken root in Britain. These latest skirmishes will do little to persuade sceptics that the Union flag can stand for anything beyond white nationalism, even though many who fly it are not white.

One wonders where these latest flag wars will lead us, and whether there will be any arrests of people for raising them or tearing them down. I have never felt instinctively nationalistic, but I understand why these symbols matter to many people, and how each flag can be subject to wildly different interpretations. Perhaps one day we will reach a point where the national flag can simply be acknowledged for what it is: the emblem of the country we live in. But if the Union flag is ever to stand for unity again, Britain has to relearn what America already knows: that a flag can be a shared symbol, not just a tribal weapon.

Even as the Netanyahu government has approved of restarting externally mediated negotiations with Hamas again, Israel is threatening to utterly destroy Gaza City if the remaining hostages aren’t returned.

Israel’s defense minister issued a stark warning on Friday, saying Gaza City could face total destruction if Hamas does not quickly agree to Israel’s conditions, at a moment the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are preparing artillery, tanks, aerial and ground forces for a new major assault on the city.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has a day ago announced authorizing the military to take control of Gaza City. Defense chief Israel Katz warned the city could face the same fate as Rafah and Beit Hanoun, which have been largely leveled after prior offensives in the wake of the Oct.7, 2023 terror attack.

“The gates of hell will soon open on Hamas’ murderers and rapists in Gaza – unless they accept Israel’s terms for ending the war,” Katz posted on X. He reiterated Israel’s demands for a cease-fire: the full release of all hostages and Hamas’ total disarmament.

Hamas, for its part, has said it is willing to release hostages in return for an end to the war, but obviously is not going to give up its weapons unless there is a full IDF withdrawal and the official establishment of a Palestinian state.

Into Friday, there are reports that the IDF is bombarding Gaza City with artillery or also airstrikes, preparing for more direct operations in the city.

Meanwhile, the other big development on Friday is that the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) has formally declared a state of famine in Gaza City and the surrounding areas.

“Soon, the gates of hell will open” if Hamas does not agree to “Israel’s conditions for ending the war”, says Israeli minister Israel Katz as mediators wait for Israel’s official response to the ceasefire proposal, which Hamas accepted.

🔴 LIVE updates: https://t.co/6Ulc16zCM1 pic.twitter.com/Q6aLl6Ckfj

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) August 22, 2025

UN chief Antonio Gutteres said the situation was a “man-made disaster” after the UN-backed body raised its food insecurity status to Phase 5 – the highest and most severe – in some parts of the Palestinian enclave.

The IPC describes that over 500,000 people across Gaza are facing “catastrophic” conditions characterized by “starvation, destitution and death”. But Israel has responded by calling the status change an “outright lie”. Gaza sources say at least two civilians have died by hunger on Friday – and with many more killed due to attacks from Israeli forces.

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

The Empire of Chaos is at war, hybrid and otherwise, not only against BRICS, but against Eurasia integration…

It took just one pic to imprint on posterity the utter humiliation of the EUrotrash political elites in Year 2025: the Coalition of the Twats, in the Oval Office, lining up like a bunch of frightened schoolkids, severely reprimanded by His Master’s Voice – the Headmaster cum Circus Ringmaster.

That was also neatly described as Trump breaks Europe over his knee.

Of course, President Putin had already predicted it, over six months before the fact:

“I assure you, Trump, with his character and persistence, will restore order quite quickly. And all of them, you’ll see, soon all of them will stand at the master’s feet and gently wag their tails.”

The White House humiliation sealed the deal, and reconfirmed an obsession: for the EUrotrash “leadership”, at all levels when it comes to relations with Russia, Peace is War.

Brandishing their warped logic, they cannot possibly understand that if Ukraine is instrumentalized – actually since before Maidan in 2014 – to harass and destabilize Russia in its western borders, Russia will forcefully counter-attack.

That’s at the heart of the Russian concept of “underlying causes” of the Ukraine tragedy, which must be thoroughly addressed if there is any real shot at Trumpian or not Trumpian “peace”.

In the Big Picture, that translates as the Empire of Chaos and Russia sitting down to set up a new “indivisibility of security” arrangement – just like Moscow proposed in December 2021: then, it was met by a non-response response.

EUrotrash Inc.’s new delirium is to attribute to itself the design of the future borders between a re-weaponized Europe and a Russia that will inevitably inflict on it a massive strategic defeat.

It’s a very long shot to imagine that Trump is capable, by himself, of imposing a new strategic reality on the warmongering yet penniless Coalition of the Twats. Whatever happens to rump Ukraine, Trump, based on his own twist and turn vociferations, actually wants Europe to “contain” Russia from now on, using an arsenal of ridiculous expensive American weapons.

So what changes is the character of this particular chapter of the Forever Wars: it will be fought by the Coalition of the Twats, and not by Americans.

In the short term, that also unveils the only strategy available for the EUrotrash/Kiev combo: outlast Trump until the 2026 mid-terms, destroy the remainder of his presidency, and be secure with the return of the mega-Russophobe gang in 2028.

Which Dead Hand will prevail?

And old school Deep State hand, who had privileged access to all Cold War era honchos, sums up the pitfalls ahead for Russia:

“Russia is taking too long to neutralize Ukraine, allowing time for NATO to reignite diversions. While the snail offensive in Ukraine does save lives, NATO seeks to weaken Russia’s strategic position in the Balkans and elsewhere that can cost far more lives in the future. If the Slavs in the Balkans are crushed that can strategically weaken Russia’s overall position, and that is far more costly than a major lightning offensive a la Stalin in Russian Ukraine. Russia must finish this war now and turn to its southern problems in the Balkans and the intrigues in Baku.”

Trump of course is oblivious to these Big Picture niceties. At best he admits, to Fox News, that “Ukraine will not regain Crimea” and “Ukraine will not join NATO.” But he does not seem to mind that “France, Germany and the UK want to deploy troops in Ukraine” as part of the new kabuki: “security guarantees”. That is an inter-galactic red line for Moscow.

In parallel, it’s wishful thinking to believe that Putin is now finally ready to negotiate “peace”. This is not about peace; it’s always about coming up with incontrovertible facts on the battle field, because Moscow knows this war will only be won in the battle field.

Russian forces have reached the final Ukraine defensive line in Donbass: Slavyansk-Kramatorsk. And is fast encircling key strongholds near Pokrovsk and Konstantinovka. Talk about a strategic/psychological turning point. From there, the – steppe – sky is the limit.

Compound it with the combined hacking of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine – which revealed that Kiev’s losses, in terms of dead and missing, amount to a staggering 1.7 million.

All of the above means that we are fast approaching the fateful moment when the victor dictates the full terms of the enemy’s capitulation. No need to march to Bankova in Kiev and plant the Russian flag.

To indulge in a tawdry Trump-spun “peace” agreement carries an overlapping amount of serious strategic defeats for Russia. For example: leaving Odessa and Kharkov to MI6 and Brit machinations. At the same time Moscow needs to start paying much closer attention to its underbelly in the South Caucasus front, where the mellifluous Turkish drive is to establish a pan-Turanic belt/corridor.

The Empire of Chaos is at war, hybrid and otherwise, not only against BRICS, but against Eurasia integration. Some of its implications will certainly be discussed in the upcoming SCO summit in Tianjin, on August 31/September 1st. Putin, Xi, Modi, Pezeshkian will all be at the table.

And that should impress on all players the imperative of BRICS and SCO, sooner rather than later, representing Eurasia, getting their act increasingly together, turbo-charging not only their economic but also geostrategic cooperation. There’s only one way to go: negotiate with the increasingly out of control Empire of Chaos as a group. Putin and Xi already now it. Lula and Modi are starting to get the picture.

Meanwhile, the temptation is irresistible to frame Putin as granting Trump a magnanimous exit: to get out of the imperial strategic defeat in Ukraine while saving face.

The problem is the massive Peace is War front will never accept it. And that goes way beyond EUrotrash Inc., including Atlanticist old money, key players in international finance, and the walking dead but not really dead neo-cons.

Russia, China, BRICS/SCO need to be on red alert 24/7. The Peace is War front is already in the process of converting themselves into the NBT front: nuclear threats, bioweapons and terror attacks. Russia may have the Dead Hand – which will exterminate any attacker. The NBT front at best has the scrawny dead hand of a dead man walking.

Authored by Nick Corbishley via NakedCapitalism.com,

The US Empire’s drums of war are once again beating loud and hard in Latin America…

Three US destroyers equipped with the Aegis system, a defence technology designed to track multiple targets and neutralise air or sea threats simultaneously, will be arriving off the coast of Venezuela in the next couple of days, according to reports by Reuters. They will be accompanied by 4,000 troops, surveillance planes and a submarine in what is by far the largest ever show of force the US has mustered against Venezuela’s Chavista government.

The ostensible casus belli of this military operation is to take down drug trafficking organisations in Latin America, now classified by the White House as narco-terroristas. They include Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua and the Cartel de los Soles, which according to Washington has close ties to the Maduro government.

Needless to say, anyone who believes or supports this latest pretext for war against a country the US has tried to regime change at least twice so far this century and which has been subject to more than a decade of crippling US sanctions is either exceptionally gullible or an apologist for empire.

That is not to say that Maduro or elements within his government are not engaged in drug trafficking — though the US is, to my knowledge, yet to present any evidence supporting that — but rather that this has little, if anything, to do with the US’ latest escalation in what is now a years-long simmering conflict.

An Old, Tired and Badly Written Script

This latest escalation began around two weeks ago with US Attorney General Pam Bondi’s announcement of a $50 million bounty for information leading to Maduro’s arrest, up from $25 million. Erik Prince, the shadowy founder of the disgraced mercenary firm Blackwater whose name has changed so often it’s hard to keep up, followed up by tweeting: “Should be dead or alive.”

It is an old, tired script for which they can’t even get good writers these days:

Today, @TheJusticeDept and @StateDept are announcing a $50 MILLION REWARD for information leading to the arrest of Nicolás Maduro. pic.twitter.com/D8LNqjS9yk

— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) August 7, 2025

The news of the deployment, reported by CNN, was later corroborated by White House press secretary Katerine Leavitt. Asked if the new operation might include the landing of troops on Venezuelan shores, she replied that the US was considering “using all its power” to stem the flow of drugs from Venezuela to the United States, and insisted that Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro is the head of a cartel, as well as an illegitimate ruler.

This must be a sweet moment for US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has been dreaming of regime change in Venezuela, as well as Cuba and Nicaragua, for as long as he has been in politics.

The 2nd-most powerful person in the Trump admin is lifelong neocon war hawk Marco Rubio, who dedicated his life to trying to overthrow the leftist govts in Venezuela, Cuba, & Nicaragua.

During Trump’s 1st term, Rubio lobbied for a US invasion of Venezuelahttps://t.co/MbnOfzE23q

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) August 20, 2025

On August 14, Rubio confirmed the deployment of US naval and air forces in the Caribbean Sea in what he described as an effort to combat drug cartels that are “utilizing international airspace and international waters” to transport drugs to the US.

From Venezuela Analysis:

The deployed US sailors and marines are assigned to the Iwo Jima (IWO) Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) and the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) Special Operations Capable (SOC). Both units are trained and equipped to conduct quick global missions to accomplish US strategic goals. They are not anti-narcotics units.

At a press conference, Rubio identified as a primary target the so-called “Cartel de los Soles,” which Washington alleges is led by Maduro and other high-ranking Venezuelan officials intent on “flooding” the US with narcotics.

“The Cartel de los Soles is one of the largest criminal organizations that exists in the hemisphere. It is indicted in the federal courts of the United States,” Rubio said. He added that the US does not recognize the Maduro government, calling it a “criminal enterprise” that threatens US national security and oil interests in Guyana, referencing Exxon Mobil’s operations in the disputed Essequibo region.

Of course, this has about as much to do with combatting the narcotics trade as the wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan had to do with combatting Islamist terrorism.

After all, the US is arguably the largest enabler of drug trafficking organisations on the planet while it wages a Global War on Drugs, just as it has been arguably the largest supporter of Islamist terrorist organisations while waging a Global War on Terror. Both types of organisations have proven to be useful allies in the pursuance of US imperial ambitions (e.g. the Colombian and Mexican cartels during Nicaragua’s Contra insurgency in the 1980s, or the Al Qaeda offshoots in Syria) while also serving as handy pretexts for military intervention.

The Real Reasons

The Venezuelan government is under no illusions about the US’ real goals. Venezuela’s Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez said that the United States wants to “force regime change” in the South American country — a goal it has been seeking for over two decades, since the failed right-wing coup against Chavez in 2003. And let’s not forget the farcical attempted coup by Trump’s hand-picked “interim leader” for Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, in 2019.

It is not hard to see why the US wants regime change in Venezuela:

Gee I wonder why the U.S. wants to invade Venezuela pic.twitter.com/C1IFG7KTZ0

— COMBATE |🇵🇷 (@upholdreality) August 20, 2025

It is not just that Venezuela has more oil under its soil and sea than any other country; it is the fact that it is located slap bang in the US’ direct neighbourhood. During last year’s presidential campaign Trump openly admitted that he wanted to seize Venezuelan oil, saying (emphasis my own): “When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have gotten all that oil, it would have been right next door.”

In 2024, Trump flat out admits that he wants Venezuela to collapse so he can take their oil.

Keep that in mind as he sends 4,000+ troops and a bunch of warships to their coastline.pic.twitter.com/RohqQDMdZk

— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) August 20, 2025

This little nugget of a speech is a perfect example of why Trump is loathed by so many in the Washington beltway — he says the quiet part out loud regarding Washington’s imperial ambitions.

Other reasons why the Trump administration once again wants to topple the Maduro government despite the lingering embarrassment from the Guaidó affair include Venezuela’s close ties to China, Russia and Iran, the US’ three most important strategic rivals.

It will be interesting to see how China and Russia respond if the US does attack Venezuela. For its part, Beijing has condemned Washington’s military build-up in the South Caribbean Sea and has expressed its opposition to “any move that violates the purposes and principles of the US Charter and a country’s sovereignty and security.”

Meanwhile, Moscow has, to my knowledge, remained conspicuously silent on the issue despite its recent strengthening of military and economic ties with Venezuela, stoking speculation in certain quarters that Putin has given Trump the green light to attack.

It is also perfectly plausible that the build-up of troops is part of a diversionary tactic. The Trump administration desperately needs to distract its MAGA base from the ongoing Epstein scandal, over which it is bleeding support from high-profile figures such as Joe Rogan. In an expert piece of trolling, Maduro responded to the US raising its bounty on his head by offering a $50 million reward for information pertaining to the Epstein case:

Hours later, Maduro offered his own $50 million bounty.

But not for a person. For information.

Specifically, the unreleased, raw Jeffrey Epstein files.

The same files America has kept sealed for years.

We’ve never seen two global giants trade blows this personal… pic.twitter.com/vSenJjeBTy

— Fernando Cao (@thefernandocz) August 11, 2025

President Maduro has so far responded to the mobilisation of US forces by ordering the deployment of four and a half million members of the National Bolivarian Militia to defend Venezuela’s “territory, sovereignty, and peace.” From Venezuela Analysis:

In a televised address on Monday, Maduro urged all militia members to be “armed and ready” to defend the entire national territory. He also ordered the activation of campesino (peasant) and workers’ militias in rural areas and factories nationwide.

“No empire will come to touch the sacred soil of Venezuela, nor should it touch the sacred soil of South America,” Maduro remarked.

The Bolivarian Militia is a voluntary combat unit of the Venezuelan armed forces that was created in 2005 by President Hugo Chávez. It is composed of civilian men and women of all ages.

Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López responded on Tuesday that the militia was prepared to “defend every inch” of the Caribbean nation. Caracas has prohibited the use of drones in Venezuelan territory for 30 days.

Washington’s threats are not just aimed at Venezuela, warns Maduro; they are aimed at the entire Latin American region. And he’s right: as we have been warning since 2023, the US is seeking to use the war on drugs as a means of reasserting its power and strategic influence in its direct neighbourhood, one gun at a time. The Venezuelan leader called for support and unity from all of the countries in the region.

Washington has rekindled its interest in its so-called “backyard” as it seeks to retrench from certain parts of the world back to the American continent as well as reassert control over the region’s abundant resources — including its rare earth elements, lithium, gold, oil, natural gas, light sweet crude, copper, abundant food crops  and vast deposits of fresh water.

Here’s Laura Richardson, the former commander of US Southern Command, laying out what SOUTHCOM wants from Latin America and the Caribbean:

Rare earth elements, lithium, oil, light sweet crude, copper, gold, the Amazon, and fresh water.

This is what the United States wants to plunder from Latin America and the Caribbean. pic.twitter.com/Q9Rh5XP0jB

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) January 21, 2023

The US government and military, and the corporations whose interests they serve, have their eyes on all of these prizes. They also have their eyes on the region’s two bi-oceanic passages, the Panama Canal and the Drake’s Passage, hence the US military’s renewed interest in Argentina, as well as no doubt the interoceanic corridor being developed across Mexico’s Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

The Mexican-Lebanese geopolitical analyst Alfredo Jalife argues that one of the main goals of US policy is to maintain firm control over the so-called “American Mediterranean”, a term first coined in the 19th century by the geographer Alexander von Humboldt to describe the combined maritime space of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.

The area took on geopolitical significance in the mid 20th century thanks to the work of US strategists Alfred Mahan and Nicholas Spykman, with Spykman describing it as the US’ soft underbelly. Jalife’s hypothesis gives added weight to Trump 2.0’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America,” one of his first acts back in office.

A Chorus of Opposition

In recent days, many of the region’s governments have spoken out against Washington’s mobilisation of forces against Venezuela. According to O Globo, Brazil’s Lula da Silva fears that Trump is planning a military intervention in Venezuela to overthrow the Maduro government, which would put Brazil in an even more delicate position vis-a-vis the Trump administration.

The US president has imposed 50% tariffs on most Brazilian goods, citing the Brazilian judiciary’s “witch hunt” against former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro over his alleged coup attempt in 2024. There are other potential reasons for Trump’s displeasure with Brazil, however, such as Lula’s growing calls for dedollarisation, including most recently at the BRICS summit in Rio.

Other Latin American leaders have expressed concern about this latest episode of US belligerence.

“From the heart of South America we strongly condemn the military deployment of the United States in waters surrounding Venezuela,” Bolivian President Luis Arce wrote on his social networks. “Linking the Bolivarian Revolution and… President Nicolás Maduro with drug trafficking is one of the greatest infamies of the Trump administration in recent times, as well as the recurrent use of the fight against drugs as an instrument of imperialist intervention in countries that do not align with its geopolitical interests.”

However, Arce will be ending his term soon. His replacement will be one of two conservative candidates who made it through to the second round of Bolivia’s presidential elections after the left-leaning MAS movement that has governed Bolivia for the best part of the past two decades turned on itself. Whoever wins the second round, one thing is safe to assume: Bolivia will soon be seeking closer realignment with the US.

In addition, Arce made an “urgent call” for multilateral organisations like the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) and the Bolivarian bloc ALBA-TCP to convene “emergency meetings” to “address this issue with the seriousness it deserves” and defend regional “sovereignty and peace.”

At an extraordinary meeting convened by Maduro, the 11 heads of state and government of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA-TCP) signed a declaration describing the US’ actions as a threat to regional security. The text also denounces Washington’s orders to deploy US military forces under “false pretexts” and demands the immediate cessation of any interventionist action.

Cross-regional unity is extremely unlikely, however Many of the governments in the region would love to see the back of Maduro and his Chavista movement. If there’s one thing the US’ Empire of Chaos has always been able to count on, it is division and polarisation among Latin America’s contingent nation states, in part because Washington itself has helped to sow it.

Readers may recall that it was Lula himself who blocked Venezuela’s proposed membership of the BRICS alliance last year, just months after Maduro’s contested re-election. That move has left Maduro more isolated on the world stage.

Maduro can count on the diplomatic support of neighbouring Colombia and Mexico, however. Colombian President Gustavo Petro warned that the US would make a mistake if it attacked Venezuela.

“The gringos are losing the plot if they think that invading Venezuela will resolve their problems,” said Petro. “They seek to put Venezuela in the same situation as Syria, only that they risk dragging Colombia into the problem.”

Colombia, of course, is the US’ closest client state in South America with at least seven US military bases. But since Petro’s election in 2022, the country has tried to steer a more independent course, recently joining the BRICS’ New Development Bank.

Mexico’s President Sheinbaum has also criticised the US’ deployment of troops near Venezuela citing Mexico’s constitutional commitment to the principles of non-intervention and self-determination of peoples. Mexico, of course, also faces the threat of US military intervention after being designated a US adversary the US Justice Department– a fate the Sheinbaum government has tried to avoid by sending dozens of cartel capos Washington’s way.

“Our Constitution clearly says it and it is always our position: the self-determination of peoples, non-intervention and the peaceful solution of disputes,” Sheinbaum said, adding that these problems can be resolved with dialogue.

Unfortunately, these are principles Washington has little time or respect for. As the map below shows, the US carried out dozens of military interventions in Latin America in the 20th century, including invasions and troop mobilisations (purple dots), coups (red), regime change operations (yellow), and military support and assistance (orange).

It has continued to meddle in the region in the 21st century, albeit with slightly less frequency and intensity (with three large operations in Venezuela, in 2003, 2019 and now 2025, Honduras in 2009, and Bolivia in 2019). That could be about to change, however, as the US sets its imperial ambitions closer to home — including, of course, Greenland and Canada. Yet somehow it is Venezuela that is the “danger to the region.”

“Venezuela es un peligro para la región” pic.twitter.com/FfBIBWUdBQ

— El Necio (@ElNecio_Cuba) August 20, 2025

The fact that the Trump administration appears to be intent on attacking Venezuela — and quite possibly Mexico — as part of its regional war against Latin America’s drug cartels flies in the face of all his promises to be a “peace president” and to put “America first.” As the former US libertarian Congressmen Ron Paul notes, President Trump’s foreign policy is turning out to be just as belligerent and interventionist as his predecessors’.

President Trump’s foreign policy is turning out to be just as militaristic and interventionist as his predecessors.

Promising “America first,” his saber-rattling from Venezuela to Ukraine and blind support for Israel are anything but.

Watch @RonPaul & @DanielLMcAdams below: pic.twitter.com/dUOwDPxaW1

— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) August 20, 2025

With Trump in “peacemaker” mode over Ukraine following the recent Alaska Summit with Putin, it will be interesting to see how his government handles the escalation of hostilities with Venezuela. The Venezuelan analyst and political scientist William Serafino posits that Washington will avoid direct military attacks against Venezuela, preferring instead to opt for a scenario of non-kinetic/hybrid operations.

[This] would encompass a wide range of operations, from cyberattacks and infrastructure sabotage to outbreaks of armed violence. A Dirty War for the purpose of attrition, even possibly re-creating a 2025-style Gideon.

Operation Gideon was an attempt by a group of exiled Venezuelan military dissidents and three members of a private security force based in the United States to infiltrate Venezuela in the coastal state of La Guaira from Colombia. It was a total fiasco. The first wave of attack resulted in the death of six Venezuelan dissidents while several more were captured by local fishermen and local police forces and then handed over to government forces. The second wave was intercepted by the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB).

If the US were to try something similar this time, it should be able to count on the support of Vente Venezuela, the opposition forces led by María Corina Machado, who has been in hiding since last year’s contested elections. In late July, Machado sent the following message via social media to her followers, the Venezuelan military and police and the international community:

“We all have tasks to do and the first thing is the covert organisation of all the structures within Venezuela. Just as we disobeyed and left them humiliatingly alone [in yesterday’s elections]. We prepare for civic action on the day it is required.”

The hope is that a groundswell of public support will come out against the Chavista government while many thousands of soldiers defect. But we have been here many times before; this is Ground Hog day in Venezuela. Machado herself tried to stage a civil revolt in September last year that fizzled to nothing. As we noted at the time, Venezuela simply does not have a strong, credible opposition:

Even with the support of the US, EU and numerous US-aligned governments in Latin America, not to mention the constant backing of the Western media and lobby groups, it has not been able to unseat Chavez or Maduro. As NC reader Cristobal wrote in the thread to a previous post, “repeated attempts to overthrow the government by means of military coups, post electoral violence, economic sanctions, and millions of dollars worth of destabilisation efforts including terrorism and cyberattacks” have come to nought.

The difference this time is that the US has sent its own forces to the area to keep a close watch over developments, and perhaps even get involved if needed, presumably by attacking strategic targets with missiles and drones. If war does break out, one thing worth keeping an eye on is whether other countries in the region join the military campaign against Venezuela. The obvious candidates would be Ecuador, Argentina and Peru.

Galvanised by the recent collapse of the Assad government in Syria and its military support for Israel’s 12-day war against Iran, is Trump now willing to cross the lines into another war, this time in Venezuela? And if he does, what will that mean for the MAGA movement, especially with the Epstein scandal still bubbling away in the background?

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Renting in Seattle now requires a much higher income than just a few years ago, according to new Zillow data sourced by Axios.. To afford the typical monthly rent in the metro area, a household must earn nearly $91,000 annually — about 23% more than five years ago.

Zillow uses the standard guideline that rent should take up no more than 30% of household income. Based on that, the typical Seattle-area rent of $2,271 in April would require an annual income of $90,840, the 11th-highest threshold among major U.S. metros.

Seattle’s relatively high household incomes help cushion the blow for many families: the region’s median household income reached $110,744 in 2023, well above Zillow’s affordability mark. But single earners face tighter constraints. Census data show Seattle’s per capita income was $82,508 last year — leaving many individuals below the level needed to comfortably pay average rent.

Axios writes that nationally, typical rents stood at $2,024 per month in April, requiring about $80,949 in annual income — roughly $10,000 less than in Seattle.

“Housing costs have surged since pre-pandemic, with rents growing quite a bit faster than wages,” said Orphe Divounguy, senior economist at Zillow. “This often leaves little room for other expenses, making it particularly difficult for those hoping to save for a down payment on a future home.”

The findings highlight the widening gap between housing costs and wages across the country, even in regions with relatively strong incomes like Seattle.

Authored by Renee Dudley with research by Doris Burke via ProPublica,

Microsoft, as a provider of cloud services to the U.S. government, is required to regularly submit security plans to officials describing how the company will protect federal computer systems.

Yet in a 2025 submission to the Defense Department, the tech giant left out key details, including its use of employees based in China, the top cyber adversary of the U.S., to work on highly sensitive department systems, according to a copy obtained by ProPublica. In fact, the Microsoft plan viewed by ProPublica makes no reference to the company’s China-based operations or foreign engineers at all.

The document belies Microsoft’s repeated assertions that it disclosed the arrangement to the federal government, showing exactly what was left out as it sold its security plan to the Defense Department. The Pentagon has been investigating the use of foreign personnel by IT contractors in the wake of reporting by ProPublica last month that exposed Microsoft’s practice.

Our work detailed how Microsoft relies on “digital escorts” — U.S. personnel with security clearances — to supervise the foreign engineers who maintain the Defense Department’s cloud systems. The department requires that people handling sensitive data be U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

Microsoft’s security plan, dated Feb. 28 and submitted to the department’s IT agency, distinguishes between personnel who have undergone and passed background screenings to access its Azure Government cloud platform and those who have not. But it omits the fact that workers who have not been screened include non-U.S. citizens based in foreign countries. “Whenever non-screened personnel request access to Azure Government, an operator who has been screened and has access to Azure Government provides escorted access,” the company said in its plan.

The document also fails to disclose that the screened digital escorts can be contractors hired by a staffing company, not Microsoft employees. ProPublica found that escorts, in many cases former military personnel selected because they possess active security clearances, often lack the expertise needed to supervise engineers with far more advanced technical skills. Microsoft has told ProPublica that escorts “are provided specific training on protecting sensitive data” and preventing harm.

Microsoft’s reference to the escort model comes two-thirds of the way into the 125-page document, known as a “System Security Plan,” in several paragraphs under the heading “Escorted Access.” Government officials are supposed to evaluate these plans to determine whether the security measures disclosed in them are acceptable.

In interviews with ProPublica, Microsoft has maintained that it disclosed the digital escorting arrangement in the plan, and that the government approved it. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other government officials have expressed shock and outrage over the model, raising questions about what, exactly, the company disclosed as it sought to win and keep government cloud computing contracts.

None of the parties involved, including Microsoft and the Defense Department, commented on the omissions in this year’s security plan. But former federal officials now say that the obliqueness of the disclosure, which ProPublica is reporting for the first time, may explain that disconnect and likely contributed to the government’s acceptance of the practice. Microsoft previously told ProPublica that its security documentation to the government, going back years, contained similar wording regarding escorts.

Former Defense Department Chief Information Officer John Sherman, who said he was unfamiliar with the digital escorting process before ProPublica’s reporting, called it a “case of not asking the perfect question to the vendor, with every conceivable prohibited condition spelled out.”

In a LinkedIn post about ProPublica’s investigation, Sherman said such a question “would’ve smoked out this crazy practice of ‘digital escorts.’” His post continued: “The DoD can’t be exposed in this way. The company needs to admit this was wrong and commit to not doing things that don’t pass a common sense test.”

Experts have said allowing China-based personnel to perform technical support and maintenance on U.S. government computer systems poses major security risks. Laws in China grant the country’s officials broad authority to collect data, and experts say it is difficult for any Chinese citizen or company to meaningfully resist a direct request from security forces or law enforcement. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has deemed China the “most active and persistent cyber threat to U.S. Government, private-sector, and critical infrastructure networks.”

Following ProPublica’s reporting last month, Microsoft said that it had stopped using China-based engineers to support Defense Department cloud computing systems. The company did not respond directly to questions from ProPublica about the security plan and instead issued a statement defending the escort practice.

“Escorted sessions were tightly monitored and supplemented by layers of security mitigations,” the statement said. “Based on the feedback we’ve received, however, we have updated our processes to prevent any involvement of China based engineers.”

Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, wrote to Hegseth last month suggesting that the Defense Department needed to strengthen oversight of its contractors and that current processes “fail to account for the growing Chinese threat.”

“As we learn more about these ‘digital escorts’ and other unwise — and outrageous — practices used by some DoD partners, it is clear the Department and Congress will need to take further action,” Cotton wrote. He continued: “We must put in place the protocols and processes to adopt innovative technology quickly, effectively, and safely.”

Since 2011, the government has used the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, known as FedRAMP, to evaluate the security practices of commercial companies that want to sell cloud services to the federal government. The Defense Department also has its own guidelines, which include the citizenship requirement for people handling sensitive data.

Both FedRAMP and the Defense Department rely on “third party assessment organizations” to evaluate whether vendors meet the government’s cloud security requirements. While the government considers these organizations “independent,” they are hired and paid directly by the company being assessed. Microsoft, for example, told ProPublica that it enlisted a company called Kratos to shepherd it through the initial FedRAMP and Defense Department authorization processes and to handle annual assessments after winning federal contracts.

On its website, Kratos calls itself the “guiding light” for organizations seeking to win government cloud contracts and said it “boasts a history of performing successful security assessments.”

In a statement to ProPublica, Kratos said its work determines “if security controls are documented accurately,” but the company did not say whether Microsoft had done so in the security plan it submitted to the Defense Department’s IT agency.

Microsoft told ProPublica that it has given demonstrations of the escort process to Kratos but not directly to federal officials. The security plan makes no reference to any such demonstration. Kratos did not respond to questions about whether its assessors were aware that non-screened personnel could include foreign workers.

A former Microsoft employee who worked with Kratos through several FedRAMP accreditations compared Microsoft’s role in the process to “leading the witness” to the desired outcome. “The government approved what we paid Kratos to tell the government to approve. You’re paying for the outcome you want,” said the former employee, who requested anonymity to discuss the confidential proceeding.

Kratos said it “vehemently denies the characterization from an unnamed source that Kratos’ services are pay for play.” In its statement, Kratos said that it has been “accredited and audited by an independent, non-profit industry group” for factors that “include impartiality, competence and independence.”

“Kratos hires and retains the most technically sophisticated, certified security and technology experts,” the company said, adding that its personnel “are beyond reproach in their work.”

For its part, Microsoft said hiring Kratos was simply part of following the government’s cloud assessment process. “As required by FedRAMP, Microsoft relies on this certified assessor to conduct independent assessments on our behalf under FedRAMP’s supervision,” Microsoft said in its statement.

Still, critics take issue with the FedRAMP process itself, saying that the arrangement of a company paying its auditor presents an inherent conflict of interest. One former official from the U.S. General Services Administration, which houses FedRAMP, likened it to a restaurant hiring and paying for its own health inspector rather than the city doing so.

The GSA did not respond to requests for comment.

The Defense Information Systems Agency, the Defense Department’s IT agency, reviewed and accepted Microsoft’s security plan. Among those involved were senior DISA officials Roger Greenwell and Jackie Snouffer, according to people familiar with the situation. Neither responded to phone messages seeking comment, and DISA and Defense Department spokespeople did not respond to ProPublica’s request to interview them.

A DISA spokesperson declined to comment for this article, saying “any responses will come from Office of the Secretary of Defense Public Affairs.”

The Office of the Secretary of Defense did not respond to questions about whether Greenwell and Snouffer, or anyone at DISA, understood that Microsoft’s China-based employees would be supporting the Defense Department’s cloud. A spokesperson also did not directly respond to questions about Microsoft’s System Security Plan but in an emailed statement said the information in such plans is considered proprietary. The spokesperson noted that “any process that fails to comply with” department restrictions barring foreigners from accessing sensitive department systems “poses unacceptable risk to the DOD infrastructure.”

That said, the office left open the door to the continued use of foreign-based engineers with digital escorts for “infrastructure support,” saying that it “may be deemed an acceptable risk,” depending on factors that include “the country of origin of the foreign national” being escorted. The department said in such scenarios foreign workers would have “view-only” capabilities, not “hands-on” access. In addition to China, Microsoft has operations in India, the European Union and elsewhere across the globe.

In a statement to ProPublica on Friday, Hegseth’s office said the Pentagon’s investigation into tech companies’ use of foreign personnel “is complete and we have identified a series of possible actions the Department could take.” A spokesperson declined to describe those actions or say whether the department would follow through with them. It’s unclear whether Microsoft’s security plan or DISA’s role in approving it was a part of the review.

“As with all contracted relationships, the Department works directly with the vendor to address concerns, to include those that have come to light with the Microsoft digital escort process,” Hegseth’s office said in the statement.

h/t Capital.news