Court Clears Trump to Deploy National Guard — Even Without an Emergency
Latest on Portland. Plus: Trump's shadow war in Latin America. America's nuclear safety team furloughed. Millions march against "King Trump." How Amazon broke the internet. And a meteoric surprise.
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You might assume this administration already has its hands full. A ceasefire deal in Gaza that needs babysitting, Ukraine and Russia need an exit, tariff brinkmanship with China (and others), troops on U.S. streets, not to mention a government shutdown.
And yet, team Trump is opening a new front in Latin America. Devoting resources to stoking conflict. Testing a historic ally. Turning up heat with adversaries. Ramping up troop deployments in the region. It would be easy to miss — there’s so much happening everywhere else. But what’s unfolding there matters, and today we’re slowing down to look at it.
Also in today’s newsletter: Two trump judges just expanded his emergency powers, again. Hundreds of people who guard our nukes are on unpaid leave. Turns out “the cloud” has weather. Even in death, Virginia Giuffre is speaking louder than the men who silenced her. And News That Doesn’t Suck on how to watch a magical meteor shower tonight.
Here Are Your Headlines
BREAKING: An appeals court today ruled that Trump can send National Guard troops to Portland, reversing a lower court’s decision freezing the action. The judges found that the president “lawfully exercised” his right to federalize the National Guard. A lower court had blocked the deployment, saying that protests outside ICE facilities were “generally peaceful” and there was no need for the Guard because the few disruptive events were “nowhere near the type of incidents that cannot be handled by regular law enforcement forces.” But the appeals court disagreed, and chastized the lower court judge, saying she should have given “great deference” to the president. Two of the three judges are Trump appointees. The third, a Clinton appointee, dissented, warning the decision “erodes core constitutional principles” and allows “the president to invoke emergency authority in a situation far divorced from an enumerated emergency.” Oregon’s attorney general said the decision would give Trump “unilateral power to put Oregon soldiers on our streets with almost no justification” and warned “we are on a dangerous path in America.”
Follow the Law: If you’ve seen federal forces firing tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters — don’t believe your lying eyes. In court today, Trump administration officials insisted to a federal judge that they are indeed following her order not to use said munitions or tear gas in Chicago. They called two recent uses of tear gas “appropriate.” One official assured the court that all CBP agents “know they must wear body cameras” — something the judge reminded them last week “was not a suggestion. It was an order.”
Amigos y Enemigos: The Trump administration is waging an undeclared military campaign in Latin American waters — leaving 32 people dead in at least seven strikes — without clear legal authority. In doing so, it’s alienating America’s most important regional ally and accelerating a geopolitical shift that’s pushing multiple countries toward China and Venezuela. The result: Washington appears to be undermining its own stated objectives in the region, from combating drug trafficking to countering authoritarian regimes. Here’s what’s happening and why the consequences matter.
End of an Era: Colombia recalled its ambassador to the US Sunday after Trump called Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro an “illegal drug leader … with a fresh mouth toward America.” Trump threatened to cut all aid and subsidies and apply tariffs on Colombian goods. He also threatened direct US action in Colombia, which he said “won’t be done nicely.” Why? The dispute erupted when President Petro accused the US of murdering a Colombian fisherman in one of Trump’s deadly attacks on boats that his administration officials claim, without evidence, are trafficking drugs for Venezuela. Petro said that “the United States has invaded our national territory, fired a missile to kill a humble fisherman, and destroyed his family.” The Colombian Foreign Ministry accused Trump of leveling a “direct threat to national sovereignty by proposing an illegal intervention in Colombian territory.” Amid the back-and-forth, the US conducted yet another deadly strike in the region, this time against a vessel which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed — again, without evidence — was carrying “substantial amounts of narcotics” and was associated with a Colombian rebel group.
Context: The Trump administration has conducted at least seven strikes against vessels it claims, without evidence, were smuggling drugs, killing at least 32 people. Most remain unidentified — Venezuelan officials are reportedly suppressing discussion of the attacks to avoid antagonizing the US — leaving families wondering if missing relatives will ever come home. Potentially among the dead: a 26-year-old Trinidad and Tobago fisherman living in Venezuela whose family says he was not a drug trafficker. Many experts and international organizations have condemned the attacks as illegal. (If the boats were smuggling drugs the US has protocol for this: the Coast Guard intercepts such vessels, with strict rules to avoid unnecessary violence). The US commander overseeing forces in the region announced he will retire, reportedly in part due to his worry that the strikes are unlawful. Even if the boats really are for narcotrafficking, a senior official at Human Rights Watch noted that “US officials cannot summarily kill people they accuse of smuggling drugs.” The Trump administration claims the people on the boats are members of a Venezuelan gang which it designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization earlier this year. But as one professor noted, “labeling everyone a terrorist does not make them a lawful target.”
What This Means: Trump’s threats are pushing Colombia toward US adversaries, including Venezuela and China. In May, after Trump threatened major tariffs, Colombia officially joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative. In June it was accepted to the development bank created by BRICS nations, which includes China and Russia. TL;DR: that’s a win for Russia and China. The US has provided Colombia with $14 billion in aid in the twenty-first century, much of it going toward military modernization and counternarcotics. US aid to Colombia has plummeted from over $740 million in 2023 to roughly $100 million this year. Why does this matter? Two reasons. First, Colombia is by far the largest producer of cocaine in the world. (Venezuela doesn’t come close.) Experts warn that cutting aid will lessen the country’s ability to combat the armed groups responsible for producing and distributing the drug. Note: cocaine production has increased over the last few years. Second, Colombia has historically been America’s primary ally in Latin America. One senior analyst told NPR “it is befuddling and profoundly unwise of the United States to alienate its strongest military partner in Latin America at a moment when tension between Washington and Venezuela is at its highest point in recent years.”
Given Up: Last week’s attack on a submersible in the Caribbean left two survivors — whom the US promptly returned to their home countries, Colombia and Ecuador. If they really were “terrorists,” as Trump and other senior officials insist, you’d think the US would have detained them. But that would open up a host of legal issues, given how unprecedented (and potential illegal) this military operation is. The Colombian government plans to prosecute their survivor; the Ecuadorean survivor will not face charges, as prosecutors concluded he hadn’t committed crimes within the country’s borders.
Warning Signs: The US has deployed more forces to the Caribbean than in decades, with roughly 10,000 troops and dozens of military assets now present in the region after months of gradual buildup. The military recently reopened a long-shuttered base in Puerto Rico and sent 10 F-35 fighter jets, at least three MQ-9 Reaper drones, and at least one heavily armed plane used to support ground troops to the island. Experts told CNN that this force isn’t big enough to invade Venezuela — at least, not yet — but is far too large for attacking a few speedboats. “What’s in the middle,” one former US envoy to Venezuela said, “is a pressure campaign, meant to rattle Venezuela.”
Snitches Get… Remember the notorious mega-prison in El Salvador, to which the Trump administration sent hundreds of immigrants, at least one by mistake? According to a new report by the Washington Post, Secretary of State Marco Rubio convinced El Salvador’s authoritarian leader, Nayib Bukele, to let the US use CECOT by promising to deliver him nine leaders of the gang MS-13 — but at least three of these individuals were informants under the protection of the US government. They’d provided information as part of a longstanding US investigation into the gang — and its ties with Bukele, who is alleged to have struck deals with MS-13. “My life is in … danger if I’m deported,” one of the men told a judge. “I will be tortured and [disposed] of.” One US contractor who worked on the MS-13 investigation called Rubio’s deal “a deep betrayal of US law enforcement” and asked, “Who would ever trust the word of US law enforcement or prosecutors again?”
Why aren’t left-leaning outlets covering Karine Jean-Pierre’s new tell-all book? The former White House Press Secretary just released a memoir criticizing the Democratic Party — yet you wouldn’t know it if you only read certain outlets. Right-leaning media like Breitbart and WXLV ran headlines such as “What Karine Jean-Pierre Couldn’t ‘Stomach’ About the Democratic Party” and “KJP Leaves Democrat Party Over ‘Horrible’ Treatment of Biden.” But left-leaning outlets are silent on it. That silence is what Ground News calls a blindspot. A blindspot happens when one side of the political spectrum leaves out key stories or context — and it’s exactly why I rely on Ground News. Their app and website gives you the tools to compare coverage across the spectrum and understand the bigger picture.
Here’s why I recommend it:
See the full picture: Compare how left, center, and right outlets cover the same story.
Spot blindspots: Find out what one side isn’t reporting.
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Oopsie: Amazon claims its web services systems are mostly back online following a massive global outage early this morning that impacted major websites, apps, banks, airlines, and over 1,000 other businesses — in other words, that broke much of the internet. One expert told CNN the outage could cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
Too Many Eggs in One Basket: Amazon Web Services is the world’s largest cloud provider, controlling about one-third of the global market, so when it goes down, hundreds of other services go down with it. One expert on cloud computing warned that “once again, we are experiencing how the concentration in the computing industry … can crash major parts of our internet all at once. The infrastructure underpinning democratic discourse, independent journalism, and secure communications cannot be dependent on a handful of companies.” The outage has prompted experts in Europe to call for the EU to reduce its reliance on US tech companies.
Far From the First Time: The outage originated at a site in Virginia, which is Amazon’s oldest and largest for web services. It suffered outages in 2020 and 2021.
Fire Away: The Trump administration today furloughed roughly three-quarters of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s staff. They’re responsible for maintaining the security and safety of America’s nuclear weapons stockpile — over 5,000 weapons — and are also first responders in cases of nuclear emergency. This is the first time the agency has furloughed workers during a government shutdown. One source warned CNN that the agency would stop being able to deliver weapons on order of the Defense Department by the end of the month unless funding is resumed.
Meanwhile: The administration recently announced that the vast majority of ICE and border patrol agents — over 70,000 in total — will be paid during the shutdown. This week they’ll reportedly receive a “supercheck” covering the hours they worked during the shutdown and the next pay period. Meantime air traffic controllers, members of the coastguard, staff at courts, and so many more workers aren’t being paid.
Show of Something: California authorities said Sunday that shrapnel from controversial live-fire military exercises hit a state Highway Patrol vehicle when an artillery shell prematurely detonated. The exercises, which forced the closure of one of the busiest stretches of highway in the country, were conducted over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom and observed by Vice President JD Vance.
Party Favor: Trump commuted the sentence of disgraced former Representative George Santos. He admitted Santos was “somewhat of a ‘rogue’” but noted that “at least Santos had the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!” Santos was sentenced to over seven years in prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. He becomes the latest in a lengthening list of Republicans — or, more accurately, loyal Trump supporters — who’ve had sentences pardoned or commuted by Trump.
Below we have headlines covering: the brazen jewelry heist that has France up in arms, the historic “No Kings” protests from this weekend, a new multi-billion-dollar deal with Australia, and new details on Epstein survivor Virginia Guiffre’s posthumous memoir. Plus some News That Doesn’t Suck on how to watch a major meteor shower tonight. Subscribe to keep reading. Your subscriptions are what make our work possible. Thank you!
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