Wednesday, July 29, 2026. America's noticing that Chump's not at all concerned with the issues that impact their lives, he continues his policy to hide the wounded and the fallen, his ICE detention centers are torture centers and that includes forced feeding of prisoners on hunger strikes, and so much more.
American
and Saudi fighter jets attacked Iranian-backed militias in eastern Iraq
early Wednesday, embroiling more countries in the war, overshadowing
diplomatic efforts and sending oil prices higher.
Iran’s
Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps also said that it launched missiles
at U.S. military targets in Jordan as retaliation for American
aggression. The Jordanian military said Wednesday that it had shot down
five missiles launched from Iran.
[. . .]
Here’s what else we’re covering.
Oil prices jump:
The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark, was up 3.5 percent at
about $87 a barrel, and West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, was
up by about the same amount on Wednesday following the attacks.Read more ›
Jordanian bases:
Iran has repeatedly targeted U.S. military sites in Jordan, which hosts
some 4,000 American soldiers. In a rare challenge to the government,
some Jordanians are calling for U.S. forces to leave the country. Read more ›
Iran-Ukraine diplomacy: Iran
considered attacking a seaport in Ukraine in response to a Ukrainian
strike on an Iranian ship last week, but a flurry of diplomatic efforts
has calmed the situation for now, Iranian and Western officials said. Read more ›
A controversial move by the Pentagon to reclassify casualties in the Iran war as being killed in “overseas 0perations” is being taken by US military veterans as a sign of disrespect for the dead.
Michael
E Smith, a retired US rear admiral who completed combat tours in Iraq,
Bosnia and Kosovo, said: “It’s such a huge disrespect for the families.
To claim that they weren’t killed as a result of the war – oh, it was
just overseas operations – is just ludicrous.”
In 1969, Life magazine ran a feature that polarized America. They posted the pictures of 242 young men who had been killed in the span of a week in Vietnam.
The
pages showed young men, some of them teenagers, either in their
military uniforms or in yearbook photos. The story showed the human cost
of the war. It was a direct counter to the Pentagon’s reliance on
kill-counts and ratios.
Prior
to that, to show the war was being won, the military would harp on enemy
body-counts as proof of victory. The argument was sold to Americans who
wanted to remain convinced that the war was justifiable that even if we
were losing hundreds of men a week, we were killing thousands of the
enemy.
However, seeing faces of fallen soldiers
in such a massive quantity did affect how Americans viewed kill counts.
When you see past the number and see the faces of the dead you start to
care less about those that we are killing and care more about those of
ours that have been killed.
The same thing
happened during World War II. Newspapers around the country would print
the names of the dead along with the location of their deaths. The
impact of seeing thousands of names printed in papers instead of a
four-to-five-digit figure caused Americans to put immense pressure on
Franklin Roosevelt and later Harry Truman to end the war as fast as
possible.
This past week, Trump and his administration
decided that kill counts are back and that deaths that make the
president look bad don’t actually count. The Pentagon decided it needed
to reduce the number of killed in action
from 18 back down to 14. Because these four brave Americans died during
a cease-fire, they are not being counted as casualties of war. Even
though Iran killed three of them and another was killed trying to disarm
an Iranian drone, the Trump administration is now insisting they didn’t
die in the Iranian war.
This as Martha McHardy (DAILY BEAST) notes, "Donald Trump’s war in Iran is the most unpopular it has ever been, according to a scathing new poll. The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll,
conducted between July 24-26 among 1,246 U.S. adults, shows that just
33 percent of Americans approve of the war, while 62 percent
disapprove. That is down from 37 percent in mid-March." The unpopular
war just grows more unpopular with each passing day. It's in the sixth
month and Chump was sure it would last a few days or a few weeks. Six
month. 151 days. No end in sight. It wrecks the economy. There was
no valid reason for the US to go to war with Iran. And Congress has
never approved this war. Chump looks like an idiot.
President Donald Trump’s approval rating has fallen to a new low since returning to the White House, according to a new Economist/YouGov poll released Tuesday, with just 34% of Americans approving of his job performance.
The survey found 62% of Americans disapprove of Trump's performance,
up two percentage points from the previous week, while 63% say the
country is headed in the wrong direction. Despite Trump's declining
numbers, Democrats have gained little ground politically, leading
Republicans by just four points on a generic congressional ballot.
The
Iran War and the economy? The two are joined. And Chump failed the
American people by starting the Iran War. There was no threat to the US
from Iran. Thanks to the war, however, our economy is trashed. IDAHO PUBLIC PRESS notes, "Reuters
reported, citing government data, that the labor force and employment
have declined since Trump returned to office. Bureau of Labor Statistics
data show the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers fell 0.4% in
June on a seasonally adjusted basis, while rising 3.5% over the
previous 12 months before seasonal adjustment."
The
deaths have not only now been reclassified in a more convenient and
politically expedient manner for the administration — namely, it makes
the total number of deaths due to Trump’s Iran war look lower and plays
into his claims about his war authority — but it also turns out the
deaths have actually been classified three separate ways on the
Pentagon’s website in the last week alone.
The four deaths had suddenly returned to the Pentagon’s Defense Casualty Analysis System
over the weekend. But rather than being re-added under Operation Epic
Fury (the Iran war mission) — which one would expect if this were indeed
just a data glitch — they were instead added to a whole new category on the site: the broadly named “Overseas Operations.”
The Pentagon also recorded more than 140 additional wounded service members in the system as part of that update.
This
newly created category is described as accounting for “casualties
starting July 7th 2026,” which is the date the administration has
claimed it began a new conflict with Iran (more on that in a bit).
That’s not the only time the Pentagon’s website has changed how these deaths were classified.
Operation
Inherent Resolve is the mission started in 2014 to defeat ISIS in Iraq
and Syria, but the service members were killed by Iranian attacks. Soon,
the language was changed to say the fallen troops “were supporting overseas operations in Jordan.”
In
other words, these service members have now been linked on the Pentagon
website to three different operations — two of which, it bears
emphasizing, allow the administration to claim the casualties weren’t
part of Operation Epic Fury.
Veterans and their families are speaking out against Chump's hiding the fallen. Ashleigh Fields (THE HILL) notes a US senator is as well:
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Monday said the Pentagon’s death toll revision for U.S. service members killed by Iran is an “act of cruelty.”
“It
just is an act of cruelty. Think what that means for those families.
But it is also the move of every autocrat in history, is to try to
control reality, to control history, to control the line of what’s
told,” Warren said during an appearance on MS Now’s “All In with Chris
Hayes.”
Warren has strongly condemned the military conflict with Iran, criticizing it as an illegal, reckless and unplanned.
Lawmakers are raising concerns with the Pentagon’s decision not to report three strikes on American bases in the Middle East and concealment of dozens of injuries in addition to deaths.
The Iran conflict has resulted in the deaths of 18 U.S. service members and 427 injuries.
However, in recent days, the Pentagon has moved to classify four deaths as “Overseas Operations” on the Defense Casualty Analysis System website.
Ten injuries were also removed from the tracking page, despite direct links to the war.
As Chump continues his highly unpopular war, as the economy continues to tank, Americans see him focused on golfing and on various conspiracies. But they don't see him focused on the issues effecting this country today. Ariel Edwards-Levy (CNN) explains this morning:
A
record-high 73% of US adults say that President Donald Trump hasn’t
paid enough attention to the country’s most important problems, a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS finds, with just 27% saying he’s had the right priorities.
That
comes amid increasingly bleak views of the Iran war, stagnating
economic unhappiness, and broad discontent about Trump’s approach to
these challenges.
Roughly
two-thirds of Americans think that Trump’s policies have worsened
economic conditions and that his military decisions in Iran have hurt
the US. Around three-quarters say the president is not in touch with the
problems ordinary Americans face in their daily lives.
Trump’s
overall approval rating, 34%, matches the career low he last saw at the
close of his first term, following the January 6, 2021, insurrection.
Half of Americans now strongly disapprove of him, a high across his
terms, with a record-low 15% strongly approving.
ELLIOTT: So what do you make of that whopping $37 1/2 billion number from Hegseth?
BILMES:
Well, when I think about the war costs, there are four categories.
There's the very up-front short-term operations, then the medium-term
costs, the long-term costs and the economic costs. And the 37 billion
that Secretary Hegseth cited is just the very tippy-tippy-tip of the
cusp - iceberg. So Mr. Hegseth is basing this figure primarily on the
historical cost of the ammunitions that have been used up. But in fact,
the replacement cost is at least 50% higher. For example,
the Patriot interceptors that we have used up cost about 2 to 3 million
each when we bought them, but the new ones, the replacements, cost 4 to 6
million. And the old Tomahawk missiles cost 1 million to 2 million, but
the replacements cost 3 to 4 million.
ELLIOTT: So that's
kind of like, let's say, you have to rebuild your house, and you don't
have enough insurance to rebuild it because you've insured your house
for what you paid 10 years ago to build it, right?
BILMES:
Yeah, that's right. But in this case, it's even more extreme because of
the fact that we also pay a significant surcharge to defense
manufacturers because we're asking them to vastly expedite the new
orders because we've used up our existing inventory at such a fast clip.
ELLIOTT: So what would you say a more accurate figure might be for the cost of this war?
BILMES:
According to my analysis, the very up-front, short-term costs are, to
date, about 120 billion. But that doesn't include another 250 billion
for rebuilding the hundreds of U.S. facilities across the Middle East
that have been destroyed or damaged. And then there are long-term costs
and economic costs, which are the sort of base of the iceberg, and they
are much larger.
ELLIOTT: Such as, like, caring for veterans? Is that what you're talking?
BILMES:
I mean, one of the significant costs is caring for veterans, and here
again, the administration has lowballed what we can expect in terms of
cost. It has mentioned the several hundred troops who have been wounded
in action, but it hasn't mentioned the 15-, 16-, 17,000 troops who have
been exposed to contaminants and toxins and will be receiving lifetime
disability benefits for breathing difficulties. It hasn't
mentioned the several hundred troops that have been exposed to fire and
inhaled smoke and were treated on the USS Gerald Ford when it had a huge
fire. I mean, there are a whole series of costs related to veterans
over their lifetimes. And remember that these veterans have an average
age of 28.
ELLIOTT: But wouldn't the Pentagon be taking some of these factors into consideration as it presents its estimates to Congress?
BILMES:
I mean, the Pentagon and, I think, countries throughout history tend
not to think about the long-term costs. What is really the kicker here? I
mean, countries throughout history tend to be optimistic. They think
the war will be over faster than it is. They think it's going to cost
less than it is. And what's very important to understand is that all of
this money - the 37 billion that Hegseth is talking about, the 67
billion that has been requested, the 150 billion that was emergency
money - all of this is being borrowed. And we also have to pay interest
on the debt. This whole approach of paying for wars
entirely through debt is entirely new in U.S. history after 2001. In all
previous U.S. wars - the War of 1812, the Civil War, World War I, World
War II, the Spanish-American War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War - we
raised taxes a lot to pay for wars. But since 2001, we have borrowed all
the money. But now what's different even than during Iraq and
Afghanistan is that, as everyone who has borrowed any money knows, we
are borrowing at much higher interest rates.
A top official at the Department of Homeland Security has torched President Donald Trump on his way out the door.
Marc
Rosenblum, the executive director of the Office of Homeland Security
Statistics, said that he was “thrilled” to announce his resignation in a
LinkedIn post on Monday after 10 years at the department.
“I’m
thrilled to end my relationship with the current administration,” he
wrote. “Between the war on immigrants, the war on feds, and the war on
facts (not to mention the crazy war in Iran and the brazen corruption), I
just need a change.”
Rosenblum spent years working to improve transparency at DHS, and spearheaded
efforts to publish information on immigration arrests and deportations
for the first time. But after the Trump administration launched its
sweeping deportation efforts, DHS stopped publishing data on ICE
detentions, Customs and Border Protection encounters, and
deportations—gutting the department’s transparency and undermining
accountability. Rosenblum told Wired that he and his co-workers had faced “a challenging and often hostile work environment.”
State
and federal officials said they are investigating after a group of
masked men impersonating Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents
pulled over and assaulted a migrant in Oregon.
The
incident, the latest in a string of crimes committed by alleged ICE
impersonators, took place between 3:30 and 5 p.m. on July 17 near
Woodburn in Clackamas County, south of Portland.
The
encounter began when the driver saw an SUV behind them turn on red and
blue emergency-style lights and pulled into a turnout.
“Two
men exited the suspect vehicle, one of whom was armed with a rifle,”
Oregon State Police said in a statement. “The suspects identified
themselves as ‘ICE’ and told the victim they were being detained. The
victim was forcibly removed from their vehicle, searched, and placed
into the back seat of the suspects' vehicle.”
Inside, a third individual assaulted the driver, police said. The victim was released about 20 minutes later.
The
suspects were described as wearing boots, baseball caps, face
coverings, and green long-sleeved shirts, as well as tactical vests
marked ‘POLICE.’
Chump's rhetoric is responsible for this. It feeds and encourges hatred. He is responsible for this. His big mouth has created an environment for this to take place.
Two
married pastors in the U.S. on religious visas were arrested by U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents last week at the McAllen
airport as they were trying to fly to a Billy Graham marriage
conference.
This follows the arrest last month
of a Catholic nun in her habit who was picked up by ICE agents while
walking to church on a Sunday in McAllen.
Nepthali
Zozaya Saucedo, 36, and his wife, Cinthia Sarai Cardona Otero, 34, both
assistant pastors at Comunidad Cristiana Emanuel Church, in Edinburg,
Texas, were arrested at the airport before their overnight flight to
North Carolina.
A Department of Homeland
Security spokesperson on Monday told Border Report that Cardona was
arrested Thursday, and Zozoya was arrested Friday. Both are from Mexico,
and the spokesperson said they both “entered the U.S. on visas on Feb.
27, 2022, and overstayed for four years after their visas expired on
July 7, 2022.”
With all of is blasphemy in 2026 so far, this is just another signal to the faithful that Chump is not one of them. He does not believe in God. That's why he repeatedly speaks of how he doesn't think he's going to heaven. He knows he's not because he knows he has no faith nor respect for those people who do have faith -- something he made clear when he went after Pope Leo earlier this year.
In January, ICE killed 2 US citizens -- Renee Good and Alex Pretti. There's still been no trial for these murders. Ingrid Vasquez (PEOPLE) reports:
McLaughlin claimed that
Alex “approached” U.S. Border Patrol officers while armed with a handgun
and “violently resisted” as they attempted to disarm him. Witnesses
later shared videos contradicting DHS’ claims, including that Pretti was
holding a phone, not a gun, in the moments before the killing.
Susan shared a heartbreaking statement on July 24
to mark six months since her son died, claiming that in that time, “No
one has been held accountable, no apologies, not a single phone call
from any governmental official, hospital personnel, or the Mpls police
dept.”
“Six-months of pain, a roller-coaster of
trauma over and over,” she continued. “Every time another death,
another mention, a picture, a tribute, a sorrow so deep. I wonder how to
move forward. Will I ever get over this loss and this pain? Will I ever
be able to enjoy life again? How does one live knowing that I have no
power to change what has happened?”
Susan said that people around the world have reached out to her, which “has been nothing less than spectacular.”
“Every
card, every gift, every heartfelt letter has been read, touched, held,
and cherished by us all,” she said. “The kindness you’ve all shown us is
beyond words. Please never forget Alex and what he believed in ~
equality and peace for all.”
She then spoke
directly to her son, writing, “I will remember the things that made you,
you. It will never take your memory. As long as I’m here, you will
never be forgotten.”
He feels nothing for the immigrants who are dead because of his policies and he feels nothing for the American citizens who have been murdered by his gestapo. People killed at traffic stops and Mark Mullen puts a hold on traffic stops? Chump doesn't even allow that hold to last 24 hours. He immediately tells Mullen to withdraw the hold.
There is no concern or respect for life to be found in Chump's empty mind.
The federal immigration agent who fatally shot a man in Maine is facing allegations that are raising questions about the hiring standards at Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Two
former wives’ allegations against ICE agent David Brouillette are
fueling the public relations disaster surrounding yet another death in
the Trump regime’s racist anti-immigrant crackdown. (The Associated Press, which extensively detailed the domestic abuse allegations, said Brouillette did not respond to its requests for comment.)
Brouillette
fatally shot Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian national,
during a traffic stop in Maine two weeks ago. The Department of Homeland
Security’s official explanation for the shooting was that Guerrero
tried to flee in his vehicle and that Brouillette shot him while
“fearing for public safety.”
Amid public outcry — and recent polling
showing that most Americans have little or no confidence in ICE — the
Trump administration said it will investigate the matter. White House
border czar Tom Homan told CNN on Sunday that the vetting process may
have failed in this case and that the process is under review.
But
the fact that people with disturbing backgrounds have been hired to
work for ICE has been no secret whatsoever — and there have been heaps
of evidence showing that the administration lowered ICE’s agency
standards to aid Trump’s mass deportation push.
Last fall, NBC News reported
that ICE’s hiring push led to some recruits being allowed to
participate in training despite criminal backgrounds and having failed
drug tests. In April, The Associated Press raised fresh concerns about
ICE’s vetting practices, spotlighting various problematic hires. In
response to the AP’s report, DHS told the outlet that vetting “is an
ongoing process, not a one-time occurrence.”
BASH:
Court documents reveal one of the ICE officers connected to the fatal
shooting in Maine was accused of abuse by two ex-wives. One of
his ex-wives told my colleague Erin Burnett that she experienced severe
domestic violence in her marriage and that he always displayed violent
behavior, and even that, if anything ever happened to her, he'd be the
one to look at. I should say he denied the allegations. But, at
one point, a judge ordered him to temporarily relinquish any firearms.
Should someone with those issues be an ICE agent?
HOMAN: No, if those of those are facts, he -- I don't think he should ever have cleared vetting. When
they hire somebody, they put them through a vetting process and look at
all that stuff. So I know, based on that information -- that's part of
the ongoing investigation. How -- did the vetting process fail? Was that
information not available? Did they not know? So there's a
separate administrative investigation on what happened here. Did you --
did we have that information? Did we not have that information? But the
vetting process, I -- if that was factual, he would have an almost
impossible time to pass vetting.
BASH: So does that raise
questions about ICE's vetting procedures, especially as it has in the
past several months ramped up its law enforcement officers, who are
around the country looking for undocumented immigrants?
HOMAN: Well, look, ICE has about 30,000 employees. They all go through vetting. This is a kind of a rare instance. But,
again, it's under review. There's several things under review, right?
The training is under review. And I know that the acting ICE director
now, David Venturella, has added additional training, because I'm one
that supports you can't -- you can't ever have too much training.
The
Trump administration subjected at least one person undertaking a hunger
strike in immigrant detention to forcible medical treatment – engaging
in medical practice that healthcare associations and international human
rights groups have described as torture.
A
document from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) health
service agency, reviewed by the Guardian, confirms for the first time
that the administration has used forced treatment on a hunger striker
since Donald Trump began his second term. The document, published online
in February by the ICE Health Service Corps (IHSC), discloses that an
unnamed patient who began hunger strikes between October and December of
last year and “was subject to force feeding, hydration, or forced
urinary catheterization, or involuntary blood draws”.
It
also notes that at least seven detained people were on hunger strike
this February, and that IHSC has forecasted a total budget of $4,504.75
for “external medical care” of hunger strike patients and a total budget
of $168,928.01 for the fiscal year of 2026 based on costs from last
year.
A court-appointed doctor
charged with investigating the standard of medical care at California's
largest ICE detention center issued a searing indictment of the
facility's health care system in a report released Monday, opening the
way for litigation to continue.
The review,
ordered by a federal judge as an impartial and systemic analysis of
whether California City Detention Facility met eight basic criteria of a
functional health care system, concluded that "the facility lacks a
reliable system to consistently provide adequate health care, placing
individuals at serious risk of both immediate and long-term harm."
The detention facility was found to be non-compliant on all eight criteria, which included:
Adequate staffing
Timely approval and access to medical specialists
Timely and responsive emergency services
Timely access to prescribed medications
A responsive "sick call" system
The
court-appointed medical review is the first-of-its-kind for an ICE
detention center. It resulted from a November class action lawsuit filed
by seven people detained at the Mojave Desert facility, who alleged
inhumane conditions and medical neglect.
As Chump continues to destroy lives not every one is silent. Even some members of the government have called out Chump's policies and actions. Even the Republican governor of Ohio. Camilo Montoya-Galvez (CBS NEWS) reports:
Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine told CBS News the Trump administration's plan to ramp up arrests and deportations of Haitian migrants is a "mistake," arguing the move could bruise the state's economy and risk putting Haitians in danger in their home country.
More
than 300,000 people from Haiti are set this week to lose Temporary
Protected Status, a humanitarian immigration program that protects them
from deportation and allows them to work, after the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's plan to end the policy for Haitians. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has drawn up plans to launch a deportation blitz focused on Haitian migrants as early as this week, CBS News reported Sunday.
The
operations could focus in part on the thousands of Haitians who live in
Ohio, many of whom have settled in the city of Springfield in recent
years. During the 2024 campaign, President Trump claimed, without evidence, that Haitian immigrants in the city were eating cats and dogs.
In
an interview on Monday in Columbus, DeWine said the planned deportation
operations would be "a blow to Springfield" and "a blow to the state of
Ohio."
"These are people who have helped
Springfield really come back," DeWine said, pointing to Haitians who
have filled jobs and opened businesses in an economically challenged
city. "The Haitians who are living there and employed there, they came
there to work, and they came there because there were jobs that were not
being filled by other people."
Let's wind down with this from Senator Patty Murray's office:
***VIDEO OF EDUARDO’S DETAINMENT ALONG WITH OTHER PHOTO AND VIDEO OF EDUARDO AND HIS WIFE ARE AVAILABLE TO THE PRESS HERE***
Seattle, WA – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray
(D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, issued the
following statement upon hearing news that Eduardo Aguirre Esparza, the
husband of an American citizen, was forcefully detained and in the
process of being deported before courts can consider emergency relief:
“On Thursday, ICE needlessly detained Eduardo Aguirre
Esparza, a local Seattle small business owner with no criminal history.
This is a man who is married to an American citizen and with deep ties
to our local community who was working hard to pursue a legal pathway to
lawful permanent residence. For the federal government to waste its
resources to forcefully detain and deport Eduardo and tear apart an
American family is plain sick. Our immigration enforcement should be
focused on violent criminals and keeping Americans safe—deporting
hardworking people like Eduardo makes no one safer, it’s just cruel and
wrong.
“I am demanding that DHS return Eduardo to Washington state
so that he may receive due process and have access to counsel—flying
Eduardo to Texas away from his lawyers to try and deport him is
fundamentally wrong and un-American. I hope others in Washington state
will join me in calling for Eduardo’s immediate return home so that the
courts can fairly consider his case.”
Eduardo Aguirre Esparza is an undocumented immigrant, married to an
American citizen. He’s a hardworking small business owner who owns a
remodeling company in Seattle. He’s lived in Seattle for 23 years.
Following his detainment to the Northwest ICE Processing Center (NWIPC)
on Thursday, Eduardo was flown out of Washington state on ICE Air at 2
AM on Saturday morning without notice to anyone, including his attorney
and family. After several stops along the way, Eduardo is now being held
in Texas where his family suspects ICE intends to conduct an expedited
deportation hearing to remove Eduardo from his home as quickly as
possible and without representation of counsel. Senator Murray is
joining Eduardo’s family in demanding that he be returned to Western
Washington to receive his due process protections.
