Via American Greatness,

President Donald Trump’s State Department has revoked more than 175,000 visas held by foreign nationals accused of crimes since the start of last year, officials said this week, marking one of the administration’s most sweeping efforts yet to remove dangerous individuals from the country.

State Department officials said the majority of revocations targeted foreign nationals accused of assault, drunk driving, theft, drug crimes, fraud, immigration violations and threats to national security.

A significant share of the revoked visas also involved allegations of child abuse, sexual assault, embezzlement and reckless driving.

Among the cases cited by officials, one foreign national lost his visa after being charged with rape and sexual battery of a victim who is mentally disabled. Another had a visa revoked following charges of felony kidnapping, human trafficking and sexual exploitation of a minor.

Other cases included a foreign national arrested for disorderly conduct, resisting arrest with violence, drunk driving and domestic violence, as well as individuals charged with sodomy of a child, aggravated sexual battery, and possession of more than a dozen counts of child sexual abuse material.

One foreign national was arrested for driving with heroin in the vehicle and a blood alcohol level more than three times the legal limit.

A U.S. embassy in North Africa revoked more than 100 visas held by so-called birth tourist parents who officials said traveled to the United States primarily to give birth so their children would obtain American citizenship.

Officials also flagged financial crimes among the revocations, including a foreign national accused of orchestrating a Medicaid scheme that billed more than $5 million for fake services under the guise of a legitimate healthcare business, and another who fabricated company revenue and forged letters to swindle investors and clients while using the false claims to fraudulently obtain a visa.

A foreign national who came to the United States to teach young students was arrested and had his visa revoked after being accused of sexually assaulting one of them.

Several foreign nationals lost their visas after publicly celebrating the assassination of Charlie Kirk, including one who wrote that “when fascists die, democrats don’t complain” and another who said Kirk “died too late.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also moved against foreign nationals deemed threats to national security, revoking the visa of a Cuban national with ties to the communist regime and of Iranian nationals connected to the Iranian government.

Officials additionally revoked the visa of a Laotian child sex offender previously pardoned by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, as well as a Kuwaiti national accused of expressing a desire for violence against Trump and referring to Americans as the “enemy.”

Back in mid-2025, when Trump’s renewed trade war with China was all the rage, we said that much of this was hot air and theatrics for the simple reason that many Chinese exporters would find easy ways to evade US tariffs thanks to “transshipments“, or using intermediary countries as fake points of origin …

Why China exports tumbled to the US and rose everywhere else? One word: transshipments pic.twitter.com/y9Pg2ML5ZX

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 10, 2025

… and none more so than Vietnam, which quickly emerged as the central nexus in US tariff evasion.

Record Vietnam transshipments by China pic.twitter.com/SBCsRrWLeh

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 8, 2025

It appears the Trump admin finally got the memo, and on Thursday it released a sharply worded report accusing Chinese exporters of orchestrating a system of “illegal transshipment” through more than 40 third countries to dodge US tariffs, branding the practice “The Great Transshipment Scam”.

The 25-page document confirms what we reported for much of 2025, and claims Chinese firms systematically diverted goods through lower-tariff jurisdictions since the US kicked off its trade war with China in 2018.

It alleges that exporters use limited assembly, relabelling, repackaging, re-invoicing and false country-of-origin declarations to disguise Chinese-origin products and secure more favourable tariff treatment on entry into the US.

The White House report said that Chinese exporters have “increasingly routed goods through third countries … where limited assembly, finishing, repackaging, relabelling or documentation changes could create the appearance of a different national origin.”

“For years the great transshipment scam has led Communist China to launder its exports through more than 40 countries, rob our treasury of tens of billions of dollars, and steal the paychecks of American workers,” said Peter Navarro, the White House senior counsellor for Trade and Manufacturing.

“This report rips the mask off.”

The Chinese embassy in Washington said that Beijing opposed the “overstretching of the concept of national security” and the use of state power to suppress Chinese enterprises”. It also warned that any “unilateral actions or agreements concerning transshipped goods must not target or harm the interests of third parties.”

“We firmly oppose any party seeking to strike a deal at China’s expense or engaging in baseless economic coercion that severely infringes upon the legitimate rights and interests of relevant enterprises and gravely disrupts the stability of global industrial and supply chains,” embassy spokesperson Liu Chang said adding that “should such situations arise, China will resolutely take necessary measures to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.”

The 40 countries named as participants in the China-linked “Great Transshipment Scam” include major US trading partners such as Canada and Mexico, as well as allies such as Japan, South Korea, the European Union and Israel. Most Southeast Asian countries are also on the list, among them Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and the Philippines. South Asian countries such as India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are also named.

The findings come amid tit-for-tat economic actions between Washington and Beijing and one month before Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to visit Washington for a leader-level summit with US President Donald Trump.

The report cited a range of third-party estimates for the annual value of goods involved in illegal or suspect transshipment, spanning roughly US$40 billion to US$303 billion. 

Assuming $75 billion in annual illegal transshipment, the administration estimates that roughly 450,000 American jobs have been displaced and up to $150 billion of GDP has been lost. These figures are described as model-based illustrations rather than observed counts.

Applying illustrative tariffs of between 25 to 45%, the report estimates annual US revenue losses in the “tens of billions of dollars”.

The report says that the administration will increase the use of artificial intelligence to monitor trade and spot transshipped goods, an initiative it calls the “Detective Border”.

The publication coincides with Washington’s efforts to close what it sees as a major loophole in its tariff regime.

Mexico has drawn particular scrutiny because of its free trade pact with the US and rising Chinese investment and flows of Chinese-made components into Mexican factories. Those concerns are now central to the ongoing joint review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). The US has declined an automatic 16-year extension of the pact, citing issues including concerns over Chinese transshipment.

Navarro termed Mexico as “one of the biggest transshippers,” where China uses the USMCA “tariff rates of nothing” and “sneak stuff in”. 

“Communist China has engaged in an extremely sophisticated set of actions that are designed essentially to transship and thereby evade the tariffs,” Navarro added.

As SCMP notes, an analysis by the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a lobby group for the US manufacturing industry, estimated that about US$14 billion in Chinese trade was diverted and transshipped to the US after the 2025 tariff escalation, with Asean countries accounting for the majority.

Washington has already moved to tighten the rules. A 2025 framework agreement with Vietnam imposed a 40 per cent tariff on goods deemed to have been transshipped, twice the rate applied to ordinary Vietnamese-origin shipments. Similar anti-transshipment provisions have been included in other bilateral arrangements and executive actions targeting indirect shipments.

Asian manufacturing hubs such as Vietnam and Thailand are also under growing scrutiny. Trade data earlier this year showed a roughly $112 billion gap between China’s reported exports to the US and arrivals recorded by US Customs and Border Protection, a discrepancy widely seen as a sign of large-scale tariff circumvention.

Although the report concludes that it “is too early to determine the net effect of the Administration’s tariff and anti-transshipment policies”, it serves as a reminder that the tariff heat remains on.

In July last year, an executive order extended a 40% penalty tariff to goods that US Customs and Border Protection determines were transshipped to evade duties. The penalty is imposed on top of any country-of-origin tariff. The administration has also begun publishing lists of countries and facilities linked to suspected tariff evasion schemes. 

The White House report came a day after Senator Bernie Moreno, a Republican from Ohio, urged Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to intensify the crackdown. In an August 12 letter, Moreno called the practice “a deliberate scheme by foreign manufacturers, overwhelmingly based in China, to falsify where their goods are made, launder them through a third country, slap on a new label and dump them into the American market.”

He said that Chinese auto parts routed through Thailand had affected manufacturing in Ohio.

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

Things Get Spicy

“The left are incompetent biotrash who purge everyone too attractive, too capable or too intelligent to uncritically accept their retarded worldview.”

– Aimee Terese on “X”

And so, all of a sudden, having failed to subvert or assassinate the president they abhor, and foil his attempt to repair our country, the combined forces of the Democratic Party, the seditious news media, and a traitorous government bureaucracy resort to communist jihad in their crusade to wreck the USA. That’s a great combo, all right: history’s worst system for managing human affairs paired with a cult of bloodthirsty conquest. They’d decapitate the Beach Boys singing Fun, Fun, Fun if they could time-travel back to 1964, and stuff anyone who objected into a gulag.

The Jihad for Lunch Bunch Sends Greetings to Infidel America

There’s a sort of last-gasp feeling about all this. Michigan Senate candidate Abdulrahman el Sayed put it nicely the other day when he said of his opponents, “When they go low, we go lower.” True dat.

And you can see where things go from here: election clean-up comes on no matter what, SAVE Act or not, probably via a comprehensive PDJT National Security Executive Order yet to be declared. There’s already a fair chance that SCOTUS will clear the way for the US Postal Service to regulate “uniform standards” for the distribution of mail-in ballots (from a March, 2026 previous exec order #15399 — “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections.”

Cue the communist jihadis to stage street-actions (a.k.a. “riots”) this fall in their captive cities and states. Since they can’t win elections without massive fraud, they will opt to do whatever is necessary to make the election impossible, and chaos is their go-to tactic in this contest of wills. The catch is, the communist jihadis are still a very small demographic.

The president is not going to allow a replay of the savage and ridiculous 2020 BLM riots. This time around, they get briskly squashed.

If the big red states like California, New York, and Illinois try something funny, like refusing to open polling places and allow the election to happen, then you will see Gavin Newsom, Kathy Hochul, and JB Pritzker marched straight into jail. The USA will temporarily become FAFO-land. The Communist Control Act of 1954 (50 U.S.C. §§ 841–844) is still on-the-books. It defines the Communist Party (or a party that quacks like one) to be “an instrumentality of a conspiracy to overthrow the Government of the United States.”

The scene begins to look like a civil war or a state of siege, constraining the president to use the military to enforce civil order where the civil authorities have failed, demurred, or revolted.

It would be extraordinary and nauseating, but arguably necessary to purge the extreme political illness that holds the nation in thrall. This disease has been allowed to worsen and rage for ten years. We are good and goddam sick of it.

As for Jihad, the first amendment prohibits religious persecution, of course, but under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, (8 U.S.C. § 1189) the State Department can designate political groups as “foreign terrorist organizations.” Nominees for that might be: the Muslim Brotherhood and any of its offshoots, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), Muslim Students Association (MSA / MSA National), American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), and others, if their spokespeople have called for the establishment of Sharia law, or advocated jihad for the purpose of capturing territory here in the USA.

While the aforesaid so-far-hypothetical events spool out around the election, something else pretty big will probably get underway this fall: the long-awaited commencement of prosecutions against former government officials (and perhaps some current ones) for their parts in the ten-year-long coup against the two-term president Donald Trump, as well as the criminal operations conducted under the sham president “Joe Biden” between those two terms.

That would have to include Dr. Anthony Fauci — with his active criminal referral already in-process at DOJ — and many of his colleagues at the public health agencies who perpetrated the Covid op. New scandalous details about it emerge from Dr. Fauci’s captured communications from the period 2020 to 2025. This week you learned that he hid crucial facts from the public about the Covid vaccine causing an alarming rate of miscarriage among pregnant women who received the shots. It’s right there, in black and white, in his texts and emails between himself and former CDC director Rochelle Walensky.

It’s also interesting to see that former FBI director Christopher Wray is coming back on the radar screen after lying low for eighteen months. You know he was involved in almost every aspect of the ten-year-long coup. He took a hand-off of the RussiaGate baton from James Comey in May of 2017 and ran with it through a dozen related ops including the FISA abuses, the Steele Dossier, Lawfare against Trump appointees (the abuse of Rudy Giuliani and others), fake impeachment # 1, the Jan. 6 capitol riot, the Mar-a-Lago raid, and much more. He probably lied to Congress a dozen times. You have to wonder how many trips he has been summoned to make to the grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida. No leaks from down there. . . everything is sealed.

So, while the summer breeze still wafts over the barbeque in the briny air, and an unnerving stillness persists, forces are moving and roiling under the surface. Enjoy at least the appearance of calm seas while you can because it’s going to roughen up in the weeks ahead.

Jason Arday, the former University of Cambridge professor who recently resigned amid controversy, has been found dead at the age of 41.

Emergency services were called to an address in Battersea, south London, on Friday afternoon, where Arday was discovered unresponsive. The London Ambulance Service arrived shortly after 3:00 p.m., deploying an ambulance crew, an advanced paramedic, and a Hazardous Area Response Team. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

The Metropolitan Police stated that while the death is unexpected, it is not currently being treated as suspicious. Arday’s next-of-kin have been informed and are receiving support from officers. The Met’s Central South Command Unit is handling the investigation, and a file is being prepared for the coroner.

Arday’s sudden passing comes just over a week after he stepped down as Cambridge’s professor of sociology of education. He resigned on August 5, citing an “unrelenting level of public scrutiny,” merely hours after the university announced an investigation into his appointment and tenure following allegations of plagiarism. The ongoing inquiry is expected to inform a broader review of Cambridge’s hiring processes for senior academic roles.

Before his resignation, Arday made history as Cambridge’s youngest-ever black professor. His impressive academic ascent began with undergraduate and postgraduate studies in education, followed by a PhD from Liverpool John Moores University. He subsequently held academic posts at the University of Roehampton, Durham University, and the University of Glasgow, where he was named a professor in 2021.

His recently completed memoir, Great and Unfortunate Things, was published in the United States earlier this week. It is scheduled to be released in the UK by Simon and Schuster on August 27.

Memoir Fabrications and “Inconsistencies”

As we noted earlier this week, advance copies of Arday’s memoir and its initial book proposal contain wild discrepancies and impossible claims.

• The “Conscious Coma”: In his book proposal, Arday claimed he was hit by a car, spent months in a “conscious coma,” and had to relearn how to walk and talk. This entire traumatic event is completely omitted from the final book.
• Shifting Illnesses: The proposal states he battled testicular cancer. The final book, however, changes this narrative, claiming he grappled with two brain tumors instead.
• The Brazilian Shaman: Arday writes about encountering a “shaman woman” in Brazil who accurately prophesied his future struggles and triumphs. The article notes a glaring issue with this story: Arday has apparently never been to Brazil.
• Time Travel: He somehow claimed to have appeared on the British documentary series Seven Up more than 20 years before he was even born.
• Superhuman Athletics: He claims to have run an astonishing 30 marathons in 35 days.

Plagiarism and Academic Integrity

Beyond the memoir, the article highlights severe allegations regarding his academic work and professional conduct.

• The Doctoral Dissertation: The London Telegraph reportedly found more than 100 passages in Arday’s PhD dissertation that were “identical or nearly identical” to a 2009 thesis by a Brunel University student named Paula Zwozdiak-Myers.
• AI-Generated Resignation: After the plagiarism allegations surfaced, Arday resigned. The article notes that an enterprising blogger ran Arday’s resignation letter through an AI detector, which concluded with “high confidence” that the letter was fully generated by Artificial Intelligence.
• Inflated Credentials: Arday was widely billed as a “professor of sociology,” but his actual academic degrees are in education.

It seems getting caught was just too much for Arday. And the left is already blaming people for noticing…

I tweeted this out last Friday. Care to apologise :
‘This just gets worse and worse. There needs to be an intervention by family, social services, colleagues, university specialists. The poor chap is obviously in serious need of help. I hope he gets it. I fear what might happen… https://t.co/SHAqSrCWf0

— Andrew Neil (@afneil) August 14, 2026

Panama Canal transit auction prices have surged to record highs this summer as an intensifying El Niño and disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz upend global shipping routes. 

A Bloomberg report Friday morning said a supertanker paid a record $4.6 million at auction to bypass the growing queue and secure an earlier transit slot next week. The spike in canal fees and vessel wait times threatens to further raise freight costs, reinforcing growing concerns about inflationary pressures across global supply chains.

Daily auctions for August passage through the canal’s busiest locks have averaged about $1.1 million, more than 16 times the average during the same period last year, according to the Financial Times, citing Argus Media. Recent auctions for the larger locks averaged a record $2.5 million. 

Bloomberg said that the liquefied petroleum gas supertanker G. Arete paid a staggering $4.6 million to skip the line, topping an earlier auction this week that exceeded $4 million.

At the same time, the Hormuz chokepoint disruption has pushed Asian buyers toward crude oil and petroleum products at major US export terminals in the Gulf of America, increasing demand for canal passage. Meanwhile, falling canal water levels linked to intensifying El Niño weather conditions, such as drought and limited rainfall, are constraining traffic, which are the main drivers behind rising transit costs. 

“The problem right now is the water levels are dropping steadily, and it’s not supposed to be doing that from May to December,” said Ross Griffith, head of Americas freight pricing at Argus, who the FT quoted. This year’s El Niño has already disrupted marine traffic on European rivers such as the Rhine and Danube, leading to cruise cancellations and freight rerouting.

More color from the FT:

The Panama Canal Authority told the FT that some vessels that recently transited have paid amounts exceeding $1mn at auction to meet their specific market needs and reflected “temporary market fluctuations”, not a tariff set by the Panama Canal.

“The announced draft adjustments will not reduce the number of daily vessel transits,” an authority spokesperson said. But depending on how conditions change, the authority could impose further restrictions, the spokesperson added.

Parash Jain, managing director and HSBC’s global head of transport and logistics research, told clients earlier this week that concerns are mounting that other key waterways around the world are also facing lower water levels, constraining shipping:

El Niño increases both drought and flood risks by shifting rainfall patterns, accelerating evaporation, and lowering river levels at key gateways such as the Panama Canal and Rhine River, while creating floods in Asia and South America, reducing harvests. Authorities respond with draught limits, caps on daily transits, and tighter slot availability, which forces vessels to load less, wait longer, or split cargoes, thus reducing effective capacity and supporting freight rates. Indeed, from 26 August, The Panama Canal Authority is lowering the maximum draft for the largest vessels transiting the canal, preparing for El Niño (6 August, Maritime Executive).

The strengthening El Niño episode poses risks well beyond shipping. As major institutional desks have warned, drought, flooding and disrupted harvests could tighten agricultural supplies and place renewed upward pressure on global food prices

By Michael Scanlon of Defense News

Boeing revealed an ultra-low-cost radar seeker Tuesday as this year’s Space and Missile Defense Symposium kicked off in Huntsville, Alabama, pitching it as a way to get missile guidance on more weapons for less money.

Installed in the nose of a missile or bomb, the seeker locates the target and guides the weapon toward it. Seekers are among the most expensive parts of a guided weapon, and Boeing’s argument is that their cost is what limits how many the military can buy.

Boeing’s Ultra Low-Cost Seeker, or ULCS, is an active seeker, meaning it emits its own radar signal rather than relying on one from an aircraft or a ground station. Boeing built it largely from commercial parts adapted for military use, and it is still in development.

The company said it is looking at using the ULCS in its air and missile defense interceptors, its guided bombs and its cruise missiles, because its design allows for reuse across all three rather than requiring a different seeker for each weapon.

Boeing said the seeker is designed for strikes from the air, land or at sea, in any weather and against moving targets. The company ran several tests on the ULCS earlier this summer.

Engineers checked the sensor design in an anechoic chamber, which absorbs stray signal reflections. The seeker also flew aboard a Beechcraft 1900 over land and water, where Boeing said it found and tracked targets as expected.

At Spaceport America in New Mexico, the seeker tracked a passing drone from a fixed position on the ground. Boeing then mounted it on a rocket standing in for a missile and launched it at a second drone carrying a reflector, which bounced radar back as a full-size target would. Boeing said the seeker survived the acceleration and vibration of every test, and detected and tracked its targets each time.

Reuse across weapons is the major selling point, according to Boeing.

“We are developing ULCS with the goal of sharing a common sensor architecture across several of our programs,” said Bob Ciesla, vice president of Boeing Precision Engagement Systems. He said the seeker is modular and built to an open standard so Boeing can fit it to different weapons and change it later without redesigning it.

Boeing already builds seekers for other weapons, some of them for competitors. The company makes the active radar seeker for the Lockheed Martin PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement interceptor and said it drew on that work for ULCS while aiming to build something cheaper for use against less sophisticated threats.

Steve Wright, Boeing’s senior manager for weapon sensors and advanced guidance, said work remains to be done.

“We still have more work to do, but the rapid testing our teams have completed prove[s] that this capability is real and will fundamentally change how we look at seeker affordability across our programs,” he said.

Boeing said its teams are studying the test data and using the results to shape the next round of work, including several flight tests in 2027 that will attempt to more closely replicate real-world scenarios.

Boeing is not alone in its attempts to exploit modularity. On Aug. 10, Lockheed Martin announced Strigo, a line of radio-frequency sensors, missile datalinks and seeker technologies built around the same modular premise, designed to serve a variety of weapons.

Boeing did not say whether its ULCS is being funded internally or attached to any existing funded weapons program. Nor did it say just how ultra-low the cost of its new seeker will be.

Via The Libertarian Institute 

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth declared that the new motto of the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition (ACCC) is “we do bad things to bad people.”

“The new motto of the ACCC is ‘we do bad things to bad people.’ That’s the mentality I want to have inside this room,” he said on Wednesday. “Ultimately, we’re dealing with bad people that have done a lot of bad things to a lot of good people for a very long time. And they’re about to meet a new sheriff in town in the ACCC.”

Under President Donald Trump and Hegseth, the Department of War has significantly expanded military operations in South America. The US has bombed dozens of vessels it claims are operated by cartels. Additionally, the US has attacked Venezuela and kidnapped the country’s president, and Trump is threatening that Cuba is next. 

The ACCC is an American-led coalition that Hegseth says will target “narco-terrorists” and drug traffickers. US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) has conducted dozens of strikes, killing over 200 people. The Pentagon has labeled the dead as narco-terrorists. However, several family members of victims have asserted the dead were engaged in fishing or other legal activities. The DEA says the operations have not impacted the flow of drugs into the US.

Last month, The Washington Post reviewed a DEA assessment that found the strikes on vessels operated by alleged narco-terrorists have not changed the amount or price of cocaine entering the US. US military officials also admitted to Congress that the operations have had no impact on purity.

The DEA said that cartels have designed new methods to smuggle drugs into the US. Cartels have bribed Colombian officials to get the location of US warships and used small aircraft for alternative routes to traffic cocaine into the US. 

“When you squeeze the balloon on one side, it always expands on the other side,“ one DEA official told The Post. “They always find the weak spots and exploit them.“

A senior Colombian official also told the outlet that the US military operations have had little impact on the cartels. “There was a dissuasive effect in one type of transportation,” the source explained.

“So it has forced them to seek out other methods. Taking the drugs out through ports has increased, stockpiling it on large ships,” the official added.

Hegseth travels to Panama, calls narcoterrorists and traffickers ‘the ISIS and al-Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere’ at conference https://t.co/wUYUJIhqpy via @OANN

— Terrie Lake (@terrielake) August 13, 2026

Congress has not authorized the President to wage war against foreign drug cartels. The White House has attempted to justify the lethal operation by designating the cartels as narco-terrorists. However, drug smuggling is a criminal act, not an act of war. Senator Rand Paul has argued the strikes amount to extrajudicial killing. 

At the end of June, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in an unusual move declared the start of a 40-day intensified pressure campaign against Russia, designed to force Moscow to the negotiating table and agree on terms favorable to Ukraine to end the war.

This was an effort seize on the momentum of repeat drone hits on Russian refinery and energy infrastructure – a reality Russia has suffered over many months, leading to an ongoing fuel crisis spanning dozens of cities and regions, and especially Crimea, which earlier in the summer had to temporarily halt fuel sales to common citizens for a time.

In mid-June, Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov proclaimed  “Hell is beginning,” for Russia and its military. “Logistics are being cut off. Crimea is being isolated,” he said at the time. From there, drone attacks across the Moscow region greatly intensified.

But Russia in turn responded with its own major campaign. In response to major nightly long-range Ukrainian drone attacks deep into its territory, Russia sent more and more ballistic missiles on Kiev – and even the far West areas of Ukraine.

On Friday Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has essentially declared Zelensky’s 40-day campaign to be defeated and moot. He described in a fresh media interview that not only will Russian forces implement a tougher response against Ukraine, but will go after the sources of Western support. He specifically raised the issue of the United States and its role.

“We have submitted a series of questions to the State Department requesting comment, including on the matter of intelligence data and the fact that the US is far more deeply involved in organizing and executing strikes deep within Russian territory against civilian targets. We await a response,” Lavrov told state television, as quoted in Reuters.

“Russia will intensify its military campaign in Ukraine and seek to destroy every element used by the West to sustain Kiev’s war effort,” the top diplomat said.

The Foreign Ministry has of late accused Ukraine of “brazen acts of ​terrorism” against shipping in the Black Sea, amid tit-for-tat ongoing attacks which have disrupted energy and grain shipping.

“We will not sink to their level. Instead, we will adopt much harsher methods to destroy everything that enables the West to fuel Kiev’s war machine. We are already doing this, and they are already moaning,” Lavrov asserted.

On the question of initiatives toward peace which Washington once prioritized (but now no longer seems to), Lavrov quoted Putin as saying while alluding back to the Alaska summit:

“Donald, you sent ​us proposals, and I’ve given them some thought. There are matters that require compromise. But I ‌accept ⁠your proposals in the form you sent them to me.”

As for Lavrov’s questions on Washington’s covert targeting support to Ukraine, the Trump administration is unlikely to give a direct response or acknowledgement to the query. 

President Trump at this start of his term vowed repeatedly to find a swift end to the war and a lasting peace, but this has remained elusive, and instead it appears he has kept up US intelligence and weapons support to Kiev – something that many MAGA supporters wanted to see a halt to.

Luigi Mangione, the 28-year-old accused of assassinating UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court on Friday to the federal charges against him – admitting that he went to New York with the intent to kill Thompson.

The plea came during an 11 a.m. hearing before U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett, added to the calendar at the last minute this week at the joint request of prosecutors and Mangione’s defense team.

“I shot Brian Thompson,” he told Garnett.

Members of Brian Thompson’s family were present in the courtroom. Outside, a crowd of Mangione supporters gathered – a fixture of his court appearances since his arrest.

The charges

Mangione was charged with two federal counts: interstate stalking resulting in death, and stalking through the use of interstate facilities resulting in death. Each carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Judge Garnett dismissed a federal murder charge in January 2026 that would have carried a potential death penalty, removing capital exposure from the federal case.

A senior Justice Department official told Fox News on Thursday that “there is no deal” – meaning Mangione would be pleading guilty without a negotiated sentencing guarantee.

The plea is the latest milestone in a case that has gripped the country since December 4, 2024.

Thompson, 50, a father of two, was gunned down on a Midtown Manhattan sidewalk outside the Hilton, hours before UnitedHealth Group was set to host its annual investor conference at the hotel. After a five-day, multistate manhunt, authorities apprehended Mangione at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

Investigators recovered a manifesto criticizing the American health insurance industry – a discovery that split public reaction sharply. While many condemned the killing as a cold-blooded assassination, others treated Mangione as a dark symbol of mounting public frustration with the U.S. healthcare system.

A looming state battle

Friday’s federal plea does not close the book. Mangione still faces a parallel state prosecution in New York for second-degree murder and weapons offenses, with trial scheduled to begin next month. Earlier terrorism-related counts in the state case have been dismissed.

The federal plea is expected to trigger an immediate clash over the state trial. Mangione’s defense team is expected to argue the state case should be dismissed on double jeopardy grounds, contending he cannot be prosecuted twice for the same conduct.

“One-plus-one is two. Double jeopardy, by any common-sense definition,” he shouted during a February court appearance.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has signaled strong opposition, arguing the federal and state charges address distinct legal harms. Legal experts have called the question genuinely open. “It is incredibly complicated,” defense attorney Paul Shechtman told the New York Times earlier this month about New York’s double jeopardy statute.

Retired NYPD inspector Paul Mauro suggested a plea without a deal could still serve Mangione: “He gets to serve his time in federal prison, where conditions are better, and he is hoping that the New York state double jeopardy law will knock out the state case.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Newsmax Thursday night that the Trump administration will announce unprecedented economic measures against Iran next week, signaling that a sharp escalation in economic warfare is just ahead as negotiations to reopen the Strait of Hormuz remain stalled. The warning comes as Tehran-linked Houthi rebel forces resume attacks on Saudi Aramco energy infrastructure, raising concerns that the conflict is spreading geographically and pushing Brent crude futures higher.

Bessent told Rob Schmitt of Newsmax:

And, you know, at the president’s orders, we have raised the level even again, and watch this space for more announcements coming next week because we are going to apply measures like have never been seen in the history of economic isolation on a country. And I think the reason we are succeeding is because it is a one-two punch.

People say, well, you know, Cuba lasted a long time. Venezuela lasted a long time. Venezuela immediately crumbled when we put the blockade on. So, it will be a combination of economic isolation like the world has never seen before and the continued blockade in the Strait of Hormuz that will keep anything from going in or out of the Iranian ports.

Watch Bessent

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced upcoming unprecedented economic measures against Iran amid ongoing blockades of its ports pic.twitter.com/OV3etgd2k0

— Chay Bowes (@BowesChay) August 14, 2026

By the midpoint of this week, we explained that, with US-Iran talks stalled, President Trump was more than likely to “opt for economic siege warfare, as the US military campaign is on hold.”

Trump recently told Axios that he is “low-keying it” with Iran. “We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money,” he said.

Washington has imposed roughly 2,200 sanctions-related designations on Tehran since 2018, according to Jeremy Paner, a partner at Hughes Hubbard & Reed who tracks Iran’s energy industry. The scale of the existing sanctions architecture underscores the challenge facing the Trump administration as it seeks to exert additional leverage on Tehran.

“If 47 years of sanctions haven’t broken Tehran’s will, more of the same is unlikely to produce any changes,” according to a Bloomberg Economics report led by Jennifer Welch. She noted that the most likely scenario is that Trump stays on the same path as before, maintaining sanctions and the blockade.

The Trump administration’s accelerated pivot toward economic warfare, rather than renewed strikes on Iran’s missile and drone capabilities along the Hormuz chokepoint or an operation against Kharg Island, likely reflects growing concern over the “perfect storm” developing in refined-products markets. With the global diesel crisis intensifying and crack spreads approaching $100 level, further strikes risk triggering a severe supply shock to the fuel that powers global industries. It would also be a political disaster if gasoline and diesel prices at US pumps soared even higher with just 81 days left until the midterm elections (read diesel crisis report).