Trump Now Wants to Send U.S. Troops to Mexico |
President Trump wants to put U.S. boots on the ground in Mexico to fight drug cartels, once again reinforcing his complete disregard for the concept of state sovereignty.
According to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, Trump has been pushing for “the participation of U.S. forces,” even though Mexico says it’s not necessary.
Nonetheless, The New York Times has reported that the Trump administration prefers to send either Special Forces (green berets) or CIA officers to join Mexican forces while they raid suspected fentanyl labs. Trump first made the request early last year but raised the idea again after the U.S. military abducted Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.
The Mexican government remains staunchly opposed to the proposition.
“We have highly trained army units and special forces,” Mexico’s national security chief, Omar García Harfuch, said last month. “What would they be needed for? … What we need is information.” Harfuch has overseen what he says is a fourfold crackdown on labs and cartels since Sheinbaum came into power.
This has been a long time coming. Trump has floated bombing and invading Mexico repeatedly since returning to office, and has certainly been emboldened by the brazen kidnapping of Maduro. Now, as he sets his eyes on Mexico, the popularity and legitimacy of Sheinbaum and her administration hang in the balance.
Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has stayed noticeably silent after one of the newspaper’s reporters, Hannah Natanson, had her home searched by federal agents Wednesday—and the Post’s staff isn’t happy.
Status.news reports that several of the publication’s employees aren’t happy with their owner’s muted reaction to the raid. One called it “nauseating and irresponsible to have our owner remain silent given this unprecedented event,” while another said they were “disappointed” but “not surprised.”
“If there was a moment to stand up for our journalistic values, this would be it,” a third staffer said.
The newspaper’s executive editor, Matt Murray, forcefully condemned the search, which resulted in a phone and a smartwatch being seized from Natanson’s home.
“This extraordinary, aggressive action is deeply concerning and raises profound questions and concern around the constitutional protections for our work,” Murray wrote in an internal memo. “The Washington Post has a long history of zealous support for robust press freedoms. The entire institution stands by those freedoms and our work.”
Bezos, though, hasn’t said anything, even as the Post’s own editorial board and other publications, such as The New York Times, have spoken out. That’s possibly due to Bezos’s efforts to cozy up to President Trump in his second term, donating $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and attending the inauguration in person.
Since then, Bezos has shifted the Post’s opinion section to the right, paid $40 million to first lady Melania Trump for the rights to a documentary, and has met privately with the president multiple times. All signs point to Bezos staying silent in order to keep Trump happy and protect his billions.
How are ICE agents picking where to commit their next act of wanton violence? Well, Palantir has an app for that!
According to a user guide obtained by 404 Media, the app provides ICE agents with a digital map populated by potential deportation targets, each of which has their own detailed dossier, including information such as their name, date of birth, Alien Registration Number (a unique identifier assigned by the U.S. government), and a photograph of the target. The dossier also includes a “confidence score” out of 100 as to how certain the app is of the target’s address.
“Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement (ELITE) is a targeting tool designed to improve capabilities for identifying and prioritizing high-value targets through advanced analytics,” the user guide states.
The information comes from a number of sources, including the Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and something called CLEAR, which could be