Almost Overnight, the Data Centers Were Everywhere in My Community—Don’t Let This Happen to You

Virginia spent years asking how quickly it could build data centers. But Maryland and other states have an opportunity to ask a better question: How do we embrace innovation without sacrificing the affordability, environment, and quality of life that make our communities worth living in?

An aerial view shows cooling vent fans on the roof next to generators on the lower level of a Digital Realty data center in Ashburn, Virginia on November 12, 2025.
(Photo by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP via Getty Images)

Danielle Johnson
Aug 21, 2026

Common Dreams


I’ve lived in Northern Virginia my whole life, but no one told us we would soon be living alongside one of the largest concentrations of data centers in the world.

No one asked our community whether we wanted them. No one explained what they would mean for our neighborhoods, our landscape, or our monthly bills. Then, almost overnight, they were everywhere. Massive industrial buildings rose where open space once stood. The constant hum became part of daily life. And one month, our electricity bill didn’t gradually creep upward, it nearly doubled.

We were told these projects would bring jobs, innovation, and economic growth. What we weren’t told was what residents would be expected to give up in return.

Now, as I watch Maryland debate whether to accelerate data center development, I can’t help but feel like I’ve seen this story before.

As someone living with the consequences of Virginia’s choices, my advice is simple: Don’t wait until the bills arrive, the forests are gone, and the data centers are already built to ask whether they were worth it.

For years, Virginia has been held up as the nation’s data center success story. But if Maryland leaders only see Virginia’s balance sheet, they’re missing the growing backlash from the people who live here.

I have watched forests disappear, industrial buildings replace open land, electricity demand surge, and communities be transformed by sprawling server farms. Everyone I know is asking whether the promised economic benefits outweigh the environmental and financial costs.

Maryland has a choice. You can rush to replicate Virginia’s model, or you can learn from our mistakes before it’s too late.

The conversation surrounding data centers has largely centered on artificial intelligence and economic development. But too often, what gets left out are the communities expected to absorb the costs.

Supporters frequently describe data centers as major job creators, but the reality is more complicated. Construction creates temporary employment, yet once operational, many hyperscale facilities require relatively few permanent workers. Communities are often asked to trade farmland, forests, neighborhoods, and increased pressure on utilities for projects that may never deliver the long-term economic engine they were promised.

That trade-off deserves far more scrutiny than it has received.

The race to build data centers is being driven largely by the explosive growth of artificial intelligence. Every major technology company wants more computing power, faster infrastructure, and greater capacity. But history teaches us that economic booms rarely continue unchecked. America has seen speculative waves in office construction, shopping malls, and commercial real estate that far exceeded demand before markets eventually corrected.

No one can say with certainty whether today’s data center boom will follow the same path. But uncertainty itself is reason for caution, not acceleration.

Maryland should pause before repeating Virginia’s mistakes. A statewide moratorium would give policymakers time to complete a comprehensive assessment of the environmental, economic, and energy impacts of these facilities; strengthen safeguards for communities; ensure developers bear the costs of new infrastructure; and give the public a meaningful voice in decisions that will shape their neighborhoods for generations.

Virginia spent years asking how quickly it could build data centers.

Maryland has an opportunity to ask a better question: How do we embrace innovation without sacrificing the affordability, environment, and quality of life that make our communities worth living in?

As someone living with the consequences of Virginia’s choices, my advice is simple: Don’t wait until the bills arrive, the forests are gone, and the data centers are already built to ask whether they were worth it.

By then, the answer may come too late.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Danielle Johnson
Danielle Johnson is a federal contractor and community advocate who lives in Woodbridge, Virginia.
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Trump alarms red state with power plant bombshell: 'Big deal'

Daniel Hampton
August 21, 2026 

RAW STORY

Natural gas plant. (Photo credit: tonton / Shutterstock)

The data center OpenAI is building in southern Ohio will draw its power from what would be the largest fossil-fuel power plant ever constructed in the United States, and the Trump administration is racing its environmental review to the finish.

According to Heatmap News, the federal review of the PORTS-Pike project's 9.2-gigawatt natural gas plant began July 10 and is slated to wrap by Dec. 23, roughly seven months to clear a facility bigger than five of Ohio's largest existing power plants combined. Regulators are handling it with an "environmental assessment," the lighter of the two federal review options, rather than a full environmental impact statement.

The gas plant would anchor a 10-gigawatt AI campus at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, a decommissioned uranium enrichment site on federal land in Pike County. OpenAI signed a 20-year lease for roughly 8 gigawatts last week, backed by a $105 billion guarantee from Nvidia and developed by SoftBank's SB Energy alongside the Energy Department.

OpenAI has cast the project as a rebirth for the region.

"Pike County helped power America's industrial growth in the 20th century and now, with this project, it has another opportunity to play a leading role in the next era of American industrialization," the company said.

The reaction from energy watchers was swift.

Heatmap's Jael Holzman, who broke the story, warned the scale hadn't sunk in: "y'all are not getting how big of a bfd this is yet." Her colleague Emily Pontecorvo laid out the trifecta drawing alarm: "the biggest fossil fueled power plant EVER BUILT IN THE US" getting the lighter review and clearing permitting "in just 7 months."

Energy analyst John Bistline put the size in perspective, noting that 9.2 gigawatts of new gas at one Ohio site is more generating capacity than any of 10 entire states hold — among them Montana, Idaho, Maine, Alaska and Vermont.

Longtime Ohio journalist Darrel Rowland took aim at the rushed review with a nod to the site's fraught history: "Where have southern Ohioans heard this before?"

‘Hoard and Destroy’? Advocates Demand Federal Probe of Book-Burning by AI Giants

“AI companies are engineering a future where only the wealthiest incumbents can build high-quality AI models and operate as the sole holders of humanity’s written works.”


Robot competitors arrange books during the library scenario competition of the Second World Humanoid Robot Games on August 16, 2026 in Beijing, China.
(Photo by Jia Tianyong/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Aug 21, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
A coalition of American civil society groups on Friday called for a federal investigation into reports that artificial intelligence giants are mass-purchasing physical books, scanning them to train their AI models, and destroying them without regard for historical artifacts or the public good.

In a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the coalition notes that “at least one top AI company, Anthropic, is known to have acquired millions of print books in bulk, scanned them into digital form, and discarded the physical originals.” The letter notes that “this process leaves only the digitized text in the company’s proprietary database for use in training its large language models behind products such as Claude.”

The coalition, led by the Demand Progress Education Fund, pointed to an internal Anthropic memo that was made public as part of a copyright lawsuit against the company. The memo is headlined “Project Panama,” which is described as “our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world.”

“We use a ‘soft codename’ for it because we don’t want it to be known that we are working on this,” the memo states. “This document is visible to all Anthropic employees, but you should avoid talking about it in public areas, and the fact that we are working on this should not be shared with anyone outside Anthropic.”

At one point, Anthropic reportedly considered approaching US libraries such as the New York Public Library for its massive book-consumption campaign. One court document describes how an Anthropic vendor’s “hydraulic powered cutting machine” would “neatly cut” books for scanning. The scanning company would then “schedule with the recycling company to pick up the completed books,” according to the filing.

Amazon is also reportedly engaged in a large book-buying operation, under which employees “cut the bindings off in order to scan the books more quickly.”

“The AI industry is acquiring books on vast commercial scales to scan and destroy, all to keep that scanned text in a private database walled off from the world and subject to corporate censorship and manipulation.”

The new letter to the FTC observes that “proxies and intermediaries now function as sourcing partners for AI companies, offering the buyers anonymity and brokering bulk book orders—including rare, out-of-print titles with few surviving copies.” 404 Media reported last month that ISBNdb, which markets itself as “the world’s largest book database,” is offering “high-volume book acquisition services for AI companies.”

“Books published before the rise of generative AI (such as Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini) command a premium because they are free of the AI-sourced text common in today’s writing,” the new letter adds.

The coalition argues that AI giants’ mass book buying and subsequent destruction—dubbed the “hoard and destroy” practice—is part of an effort to “build and entrench their market dominance” by “corner[ing] the essential inputs of AI development.”

“We ask the FTC to use its investigative authorities, including potentially under Section 6(b) of the FTC Act, to determine whether and to what extent this practice forecloses competing AI developers and the public from a scarce, non-reproducible input and whether it constitutes an unfair method of competition under Section 5 of the FTC Act,” the groups write.

“Through their practice of permanently destroying books en masse and thus removing those non-renewable resources from broader access, AI companies are engineering a future where only the wealthiest incumbents can build high-quality AI models and operate as the sole holders of humanity’s written works—after having destroyed the originals to get there.”

Kate Oh, special adviser to the Demand Progress Education Fund, said in a statement Friday that “the secretive and reckless way that major AI companies like Anthropic and Amazon are acting shows that there is real smoke here that the FTC needs to investigate.”

“There is credible reporting that the AI industry is acquiring books on vast commercial scales to scan and destroy, all to keep that scanned text in a private database walled off from the world and subject to corporate censorship and manipulation,” Oh added.

Trump Threatens to Sue Think Tank Over Study That Exposed Folly of His DC National Guard Deployment

“Efforts to silence independent research because its findings are unwelcome by an administration or president should alarm every American.”


A National Guard vehicle is parked near the Lincoln Memorial on August 14, 2025 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Aug 21, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

President Donald Trump is threatening to sue a liberal think tank after it published a report last month casting doubt on the purported effectiveness of his deployment of the National Guard in Washington, DC.

The New York Times reported on Friday that Alejandro Brito, one of the president’s personal lawyers, sent a letter to the Center for American Progress (CAP) this week demanding that it retract a study it published on July 13, which concluded that there was no evidence the National Guard’s presence in the nation’s capital did anything to reduce violent crime.

Brito threatened to file a $5 billion defamation lawsuit against CAP if it did not retract the report and offer a personal apology to the president, according to the Times.

CAP president Neera Tanden said the organization was standing by its work and would not back down in the fact of legal threats from the president.

“This threatened lawsuit’s attack on facts and evidence is baseless,” said Tanden. “A fundamental protection of the First Amendment is to allow for the publication of facts and analysis that is contrary to the arguments and claims of any administration. A lawsuit is a transparent attempt to silence us.”

Tanden added that “efforts to silence independent research because its findings are unwelcome by an administration or president should alarm every American.”

CAP’s report notes that crime has been declining in major US cities across the country over the last two years, and it finds that declines in Washington, DC over that period were not significantly greater than in cities where there was no National Guard presence.

“Despite multiple tests using multiple data sources, measures, and windows of time,” the report concludes, “there is no compelling evidence that these deployments reduced homicides, violent crime, or gun violence.”

The report adds that the goal of the deployment was never about fighting crime but rather “a dangerous power grab by the Trump administration.”

CAP isn’t alone in questioning the effectiveness of Trump’s DC National Guard deployment.

Reuters on Wednesday published an investigation finding that National Guard soldiers have been mentioned in just 1.3% of cases brought before the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, which processes nearly all prosecutions in the city.

What’s more, the investigation found that National Guard soldiers were mostly deployed to wealthier neighborhoods in the city, where they responded to minor incidents.

After examining court records, Reuters investigators “could find no reference... to soldiers doing any kind of law enforcement in the neighborhoods where about 82% of the city’s 859 murders occurred over the past five years.”

Deploying the National Guard in DC is also an expensive endeavor. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) earlier this month revealed that keeping soldiers deployed in the city is projected to cost taxpayers an extra $1.4 billion through the end of Trump’s term.

‘Cruel and Shameful’: ICE Begins Mass Deportation of Haitians After Trump TPS Revocation

One Democratic congresswoman denounced the expulsions, which followed the lifting of temporary protected status for 350,000 Haitians, as “a humanitarian betrayal that will stain America for generations.”

People displaced from their homes due to gang violence are seen sheltering at a temporary camp in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on August 17, 2026.
(Photo by Clarens Siffroy/AFP via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Aug 21, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement charter flight on Thursday deported 161 Haitians following the Trump administration’s cancellation of temporary protected status for 350,000 people from the Caribbean nation ravaged by deadly gang violence and a wider humanitarian crisis.

The first of what the administration says will be a wave of mass deportations to Haiti followed a June decision by the right-wing US Supreme Court affirming the Department of Homeland Security’s revocation of temporary protected status for Haitians and 6,000 Syrians, many of whom have lived in the United States for years under TPS due to unsafe conditions in their countries.


‘Bigotry’ as Government Policy: Trump Orders ICE to Ramp Up Arrests of Haitians

However, Haiti’s National Office of Migration said that none of those aboard Thursday’s flight were former TPS beneficiaries; rather, they were “people facing removal proceedings after entering the US without authorization, people who had served prison sentences, and some individuals born outside Haiti to at least one Haitian parent,” according to The Haitian Times.

Late last month, President Donald Trump ordered ICE to ramp up arrests of Haitians, who have been the target of racist verbal attacks by the president and other Republicans. Vice President JD Vance, infamously—and baselessly—claimed during Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign that the migrants were killing and eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio.

Beloved Springfield pastor Gilbert Joubert Adrien was arrested along with another Haitian by ICE agents on Thursday morning.

Carl Ruby, also a local pastor and founder of immigrant advocacy group G92, told the Springfield News-Sun on Friday that Adrien’s arrest inflicted a “profound wound” to the “embattled” Haitian community.

“Pastor Joubert Adrien left Haiti because his life was in danger, served Christ and his congregation faithfully, and his arrest shows how far ICE will stoop to incite panic among people who came here peacefully, came here legally, and offered nothing but good to our community,” Ruby said.

Thursday’s deportations came despite continuing warnings about Haiti’s deteriorating security conditions. Gangs control an estimated 70% of the capital city of Port-au-Prince and major transportation routes, while roughly 1.5 million of the Caribbean nation’s approximately 12 million people have been displaced by violence, according to the United Nations International Organization for Migration.

The UN says more than 3,100 Haitians were killed and nearly 1,200 others wounded between January and June of this year. The violence isn’t confined to Port-au-Prince; for example, at least 70 people were killed and 30 injured in a March gang massacre in the Artibonite region.

Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of the immigration nonprofit Global Refuge, said earlier this month that it is a “stunning contradiction” that a government that advises Americans against traveling to Haiti due to the dangerous security situation there would “compel hundreds of thousands of Haitians into such dire circumstances.”

The Trump administration policy, O’Mara Vignarajah added, “is an unconscionable abdication of our moral responsibility.”

Democratic US lawmakers also condemned the deportations.

Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.)—who earlier this year led the Republican-controlled House of Representatives’ remarkable passage of a bill extending TPS for Haiti for three years—called the Trump administration’s policy “cruel and shameful.”

“We should not deport ANYONE into an ongoing humanitarian crisis,” Pressley added. “The Senate must come back into session NOW and pass our bill to extend TPS for Haiti before more people die.”



Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Wednesday on social media: “Haitian families on TPS are part of the fabric of our community and our economy. They’re neighbors, workers, and friends who have been in the US legally to stay safe from horrific violence in Haiti. It is cruel for Donald Trump to end TPS protections for them now.”

Congressman Greg Landsman (R-Ohio) also took to social media, writing Thursday that “our Haitian neighbors deserve dignity and respect... not this dangerous deportation effort from the Trump administration.”

Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) asserted Friday that “our Haitian neighbors asked only for safety from the gang violence, rampant sexual exploitation, and vicious anarchy that has totally overtaken their nation.”

“Donald Trump saw their suffering, and asked only how he could make it worse,” she added. “His act to force thousands of men, women, and children back into the same hell they barely escaped with their lives is a humanitarian betrayal that will stain America for generations.”

Thursday’s ICE flight landed in the relatively peaceful northern city of Cap-Haitien, where The Associated Press interviewed deportees including Jean Diane Louis, who left Haiti when he was 5 years old.

“ICE came and took me without questioning me,” Louis said. “They just sent me here.”

Back in Ohio, Viles Dorsainvil, director of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, told the News-Sun that “behind every number is a human being.”

“Behind every detention is a family,” Dorsainvil added. “Behind every deportation is a mother, a father, a husband, a wife, a child, a friend, a church member, a coworker, or a neighbor whose life may be changed forever.”

Casar Demands Shutdown of Texas Detention Center After ICE Abducts 5-Year-Old on Way to Soccer Match

“Liam should be starting kindergarten this week,” said Rep. Greg Casar. “Instead, he’s sitting in a trailer prison right now in Dilley, Texas.”

Liam Tadeo is seen in a family photo that his aunt posted on a GoFundMe fundraiser after he and his father were detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement on August 16, 2026, and taken to South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas.
(Photo: Patricia Resendiz/GoFundMe)

Julia Conley
Aug 21, 2026
COMMON DREAMS


US Congressman Greg Casar on Thursday repeated his call for the Trump administration to close the immigration detention center in southern Texas where it’s held thousands of children over the past 18 months—children, the progressive Democrat said, who “should be playing soccer, going to school, living their lives, not being arrested on the streets,” as one of the center’s newest detainees, 5-year-old Liam Tadeo, was earlier this week.

Casar demanded the release of at least 112 children who are being held at South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, outside San Antonio, days after Tadeo was abducted along with his father by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents during a traffic stop in Austin.



Condemning ‘Commodification of Child Imprisonment,’ Castro Leads Call to Shut Down Dilley ICE Center



‘Five-Alarm Fire’: Thousands of Immigrant Kids Set to Lose to Lawyers Thanks to Trump

Tadeo and his father were on their way to the child’s soccer game, days before he was set to start kindergarten, when they were arrested and taken to the detention center, said Casar. The facility, which is commonly known simply as Dilley, is a for-profit center run by CoreCivic that has come under scrutiny over reports of medical neglect and poor conditions for the dozens of families detained there.

“Liam should be starting kindergarten this week,” said Casar, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “Instead, he’s sitting in a trailer prison right now in Dilley, Texas.”



Lidia Terrazas of Univision posted a video on social media showing Tadeo crying during the arrest.

“Liam has been living in the United States for most of his life,” said Terrazas. “I just want you to see him. I want you to look at his face. I can’t even imagine what he was feeling in this moment... He’s crying, he looks at his dad while surrounded by immigration officers.”



Terrazas and Casar both noted that Tadeo has the same name as another 5-year-old boy, Liam Conejo Ramos, who was abducted by ICE on January 20 in Minnesota, as he was returning home from preschool with his father. Images of the boy wearing a blue bunny hat and a Spider-Man backpack were circulated widely online as the public expressed outrage over his detention, which happened around the same time that two US citizens were fatally shot on the streets of Minneapolis by federal immigration agents.

A federal judge ordered the release of Conejo Ramos and his father in February, but they are now fighting a ruling to deport them.

Patricia Resendiz, Tadeo’s aunt, posted a fundraiser on GoFundMe, asking the community “for help to secure the release of my nephew.”

“The detention of Liam and my brother-in-law was cruel; they are not criminals—they were simply on their way to a soccer match,” wrote Resendiz. “Liam is a beautiful, intelligent, and big-hearted little boy. My sister is devastated, and so are we. Liam was detained right in front of my son, his cousin. My son told me that the ICE agents said to Liam, ‘You can’t escape.’ We appreciate any help you can provide.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE have not responded to questions from the press, including Newsweek and Univision, about Tadeo’s detention.

But DHS recently told FOX 7 Austin that it would continue ramping up deportation operations in the Texas capital, with the agency asserting that “being in detention is a choice” and imploring undocumented immigrants to “self-deport.”

“The United States is offering illegal aliens $2,600 and a free flight to self-deport now. We encourage every person here illegally to take advantage of this offer and reserve the chance to come back to the US the right legal way to live the American dream. If not, you will be arrested and deported without a chance to return,” said DHS. “Under President [Donald] Trump and Secretary [Markwayne] Mullin, ICE is targeting the worst of the worst.”

Despite the administration’s persistent claims that undocumented immigrants should “self-deport,” AL.com reported on Thursday on a Venezuelan family who attempted to return to their home country, went to an ICE check-in appointment as part of the process, and were detained and taken to Dilley, where they’ve been held for more than a month.

The family’s 7-year-old daughter has appealed to Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), the chair of a Senate subcommittee on homeland security appropriations who spoke out against Conejo Ramos’ detention earlier the year, asking her to help secure the family’s release.



Tadeo was detained a day before Judge Dolly M. Gee of the US District Court in Los Angeles ordered a new oversight effort at Dilley and other detention facilities in Texas and California where children are being held. The judge found that children at Dilley have likely been forced to live in unsafe temperatures with inadequate sleeping quarters and without basic hygiene products like soap.

The court also found that the government may be keeping inaccurate records regarding the length of children’s detention. Under the Flores settlement, children cannot be held in immigration detention for longer than 20 days. Over the past year, said attorneys for minors who have been detained at Dilley, about 1,560 children have been held at the facility for more than 20 days.

TRUMP'S OTHER WAR 

‘Lethal and Illegal Economic Aggression’: Trump, Rubio Rebuked for New Sanctions on Cuba

One Cuban diplomat accused the Trump administration of waging “economic warfare that actually kills people without bombs.”


US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio attend the president’s roundtable on mining at the US Department of State in Washington, DC on August 7, 2026.
(Photo by Freddie Everett/US Department of State)

Brett Wilkins
Aug 21, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
The Trump administration on Thursday intensified its campaign of economic pressure against Cuba, imposing sanctions on nine state-owned companies and three officials—a move critics condemned as an escalation of a decadeslong embargo amid a worsening humanitarian crisis.

“The Cuban regime has long sponsored a vast subversive network in the United States aimed at identifying, cultivating, and radicalizing subversives, largely operating under the pretext of educational or cultural exchange,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio dubiously claimed. Citing an executive order issued by President Donald Trump in May, he announced new sanctions against entities including the Cuban Ministry of Construction and the mining group GEOMINSAL.

Also sanctioned were three leaders of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, an international solidarity group, including ICAP president Fernando González Llort, a member of the so-called Cuban Five who served 15 years behind bars in the US after being convicted—critics say unfairly—of espionage in 2001 for infiltrating exile groups plotting terrorist attacks targeting Cuba’s socialist government.

“The Trump administration will not stand by while a hostile foreign power seeks to exploit our freedoms—none of which are afforded to its people—by misleading and corrupting American citizens with lies, spy tradecraft, and other malfeasance as part of the regime’s raison d’être of exporting Marxism, racial resentment, and communist violence across the world,” Rubio said.



Rubio—who has falsely claimed that his parents fled communism in Cuba when they actually emigrated during an earlier US-backed dictatorship—added that the new sanctions “make clear that the Trump administration will not tolerate the Cuban regime’s efforts to fund its repression or continue its decadeslong campaign of subversive anti-American activities.”

Responding to the fresh sanctions, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez accused Rubio of having a “failed obsession against Cuba” and seeking to “punish Cuban companies with the deliberate purpose of harming our economy and preventing the government of Cuba from guaranteeing basic services to the population, which are already in a critical situation as a result of the blockade.”

Cuban Ambassador to the United Nations Ernesto Soberón asked on social media: “What is [Rubio] afraid of? If he’s so convinced that the Cuban government is incompetent, why does he need to impose new sanctions that collectively punish the Cuban people and also attempt to prevent Cuba’s trade relations with third parties?”

The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a Washington, DC-based think tank, accused the US administration of “escalating its lethal and illegal economic aggression against Cuba.”

CEPR research associate Pedro Labayen Herrera said in a statement that “these sanctions are the latest move in a more than 60-year US economic siege on Cuba, which has intensified since January’s naval blockade, an overt and illegal act of war.”

“By targeting the island’s mining, metals, construction, and trade sectors, the administration will further restrict the Cuban government’s ability to manage a deliberately designed crisis that UN experts recently warned could become a ‘silent Gaza,’” he added.



The United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly condemned the broader US economic blockade of Cuba 33 times.

The new US measures follow months of escalating aggression against Cuba by the Trump administration, including threats and reported preparations to attack, an oil blockade that critics say is causing the deaths of infants and sick people, and a Department of Justice (DOJ) indictment of former President Raúl Castro for his alleged role in the 1996 shoot-down of planes operated by a hostile US-based counterrevolutionary group following repeated warnings that they had violated Cuban airspace.

The oil blockade has hit especially hard given the January US invasion of Venezuela—which supplied between one-third and half of Cuba’s energy needs—and abduction of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.

The Trump administration also reinstated Cuba on the US State Sponsors of Terrorism list, from which former President Joe Biden removed the country before leaving office in 2021. Cuba was initially added to the list during the Reagan administration amid a decadeslong campaign of US-backed Cuban exile terrorism, failed assassination attempts, economic warfare, and covert operations large and small in a futile effort to overthrow the government of longtime revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.

The fresh sanctions follow last month’s State Department report baselessly claiming that Cuba aims to “conquer” the United States and is backing “left-wing terrorism on American soil” while using dozens of US civil society groups, activists, journalists, and elected officials to further Havana’s supposedly nefarious goals.

“Rather than publishing unfounded, far-fetched claims of a Cuban-led campaign to subvert the United States as a pretext for military action against Havana, Washington should recognize that over half a century of strangulation has failed to bring about regime change,” Herrera said on Thursday. “Instead, US policy has crippled the country’s economy and healthcare system, depriving its people of a dignified life and contributing to significant levels of out-migration.”

“The Trump administration must lift all sanctions, respect Cuban sovereignty, and engage diplomatically,” he added, “or risk further immiserating the Cuban people and widening a crisis that will reverberate throughout the hemisphere.”

Seething MAGA reminds Trump who voted for him after 'slap in the face' to ranchers

Matthew Chapman
August 21, 2026 

RAW STORY

President Donald Trump's plan to lower sky-high beef prices before the midterms has triggered a rare rebellion from within his own party, with ranchers, senators, and even his health-food allies calling it a betrayal.

Trump announced Friday he'll remove duties on 300,000 metric tons of imported beef, claiming suppliers agreed to sell at a 25% discount that consumers will feel at checkout. The tariff relief lasts just 90 days, conveniently expiring right after November's midterm elections. A formal executive order is expected within two weeks.

But according to Politico, many of Trump's supporters and sympathetic special interests aren't happy.

United States Cattlemen's Association president Justin Tupper didn't hold back, saying, "You don't put America first by putting U.S. cattle producers last."

Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE) called herself "extremely disappointed," while Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-MT) warned the move would hurt ranchers, who are "most of whom are MAGA Republicans." Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) went further, branding it a "slap in the face" to ranchers and consumers alike, and Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) said the plan "compromises Nebraska farmers and ranchers."

One anonymous agriculture industry insider offered a blunt diagnosis of Trump's strategy.

"This is Donald Trump in purgatory," the industry representative said, describing it as trading long-term strategy for a short-term fix that won't meaningfully lower prices.

Even Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins had spent months publicly opposing similar import plans, instead blaming Biden-era policies for the beef shortage driving up costs. Industry insiders say they weren't briefed on Trump's announcement beforehand and remain unsure which countries could even supply that much beef. Meanwhile, MAHA movement figures like Alex Clark blasted the move as anti-health messaging, given the administration's own guidance pushing Americans to eat more beef as a protein source.

With ground beef prices near $7 a pound and no clear path to lasting relief, Trump's gambit risks alienating ranchers without delivering the grocery-store savings voters are demanding.

Corrupt ‘Cash-for-Clemency’ Trump Pardons Have Cost Crime Victims $1.7 Billion in Damages

“Wealthy white-collar criminals and drug traffickers hire Trump insiders, pour money into his political operation... and suddenly the doors of the White House swing open for a pardon.”

US President Donald Trump speaks after signing a pardon for US businessman Devon Archer, a former business partner of Hunter Biden, during a meeting with US ambassadors in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on March 25, 2025.
(Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Stephen Prager
Aug 21, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

President Donald Trump’s pardons for rich criminals have robbed their victims of $1.7 billion in compensation, according to a report out Friday from the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.

The analysis, released by the committee’s ranking member, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), examines how Trump has turned the traditional pardon process into a “cash-for-clemency” system that has allowed influencers and fixers close to the president to make millions by selling access to his pardon power.

“Donald Trump has taken one of the most solemn constitutional powers of the presidency and turned it into a bustling marketplace for insider political influence and unjust personal enrichment,” Raskin said in a statement on Friday.

“Wealthy white-collar criminals and drug traffickers hire Trump insiders, pour money into his political operation or cultivate his family’s financial interests, and suddenly the doors of the White House swing open for a pardon, commutation, and forgiveness of all fines and financial restitution owed,” he continued.

Drawing on Reuters’ reporting from June, the report examines how Trump has sidelined the traditional Department of Justice guidelines for offering pardons, which long involved career civil servants evaluating petitions for clemency based on the seriousness of the offense, the individual’s rehabilitation, and restitution to victims.

In its place, Trump has consolidated control of the pardon power within the White House, where the determining factor has often been a person’s connections to Trump’s inner circle. This has allowed the clique of people with access to the president to act as gatekeepers and reap the rewards.

According to Reuters:
Reuters identified 290 advocates, or influencers, who publicly or privately helped secure clemency for 197 recipients. Because some of the advocates worked on behalf of multiple candidates, their efforts at times overlapped, representing 624 different acts of influence. Among the influencers, 73 helped secure more than one pardon or sentence commutation. Brett Tolman, a former US attorney now in private practice in Utah, has been involved in at least 12 pardons or commutations. Roger Stone, a veteran political consultant and longtime Trump confidant, had a hand in at least five.

Trump’s use of the pardon system to reward friends and donors is widely reported. But Raskin’s report sheds new light on the other side of the equation: the victims who were denied compensation after Trump waved away the sentences of those who scammed and stole from them.

Trevor Milton, an auto company executive who was convicted in 2022 of defrauding investors after pretending that one of his company’s vehicles had autonomous capabilities, was potentially on the hook for nearly $700 million.

But after he and his wife donated a combined $1.8 million to committees supporting Trump and soon-to-be Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in 2024, Milton received a pardon from the president that wiped out his obligation to pay.

Afterward, Trump called Milton personally and told him to “call Bobby [Kennedy] and thank him” for the pardon, according to Reuters.

Paul Walczak, a healthcare executive who funded a lavish lifestyle by stealing millions in payroll taxes from his low-wage employees, got a pardon from Trump weeks after his mother, a top GOP fundraiser, attended a $1-million-a-plate event at Mar-a-Lago. As a result, he got out of paying back $4.5 million in stolen payroll taxes, which go to fund programs like Medicare and Social Security.

Jason Galanis, who was convicted of stealing millions from the Oglala Sioux Nation and defrauding pension funds for union workers in New York State, avoided paying over $84 million in restitution after Trump pardoned him in early 2025.

A longtime associate of former President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, Galanis gained favor with Trump after he appeared as a star witness for Republicans during their impeachment effort over the Democratic president’s alleged “influence peddling.”

Other fraudsters relied directly on the network of pardon lobbyists, like nursing home owner Joseph Schwartz, who also stole payroll taxes from his employees and had separately lost several wrongful death lawsuits for neglecting elderly patients.

While in prison on a three-year sentence, Schwartz spent more than $1.1 million on lobbyists to advocate for his release. This included access to the powerful pro-Trump influencer Laura Loomer, White House “pardon czar” Alice Marie Johnson, and White House Counsel David Warrington.

The report said this got him out of paying $33 million he still owes in federal taxes, and the report also notes his apparent attempts to avoid paying out wrongful death judgments.

The report also details Trump’s pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who’d been convicted of helping the Sinaloa Cartel import hundreds of tons of drugs into the United States.

He was convicted in 2024 after prosecutors spent more than 15 years building a case against him. But his role in helping rich, MAGA-allied tech moguls, including Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, with a project called Próspera—a libertarian “charter city” for cryptocurrency investors—made his case a cause célèbre among Trump’s inner circle.

Roger Stone, who claimed that pardoning Hernández would “save the Próspera experiment,” joined former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and others at Mar-a-Lago to push for the ex-Honduran leader’s freedom, and within hours it was granted.

As the report details, “the Bureau of Prisons paid a tactical team overtime to drive Mr. Hernández from his maximum-security prison in West Virginia to the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, where he was treated to a luxury stay at taxpayer expense in one of New York’s finest hotels.”

Some of the criminality pardoned by Trump verges on cartoonish. A former Las Vegas City Council member, Michele Fiore, nicknamed “Lady Trump,” stole $70,000 from a memorial for police officers killed on duty and used it to pay for rent, cosmetic surgery, and her daughter’s wedding. To this day, she refuses to pay the money back.

Adriana and Andres Camberos, meanwhile, escaped having to pay their victims over $50 million and forfeit an additional $30 million in illegal proceeds from an elaborate grocery store fraud scheme that allowed them to pay for luxury sports cars, beachfront properties, investments, and cryptocurrency.

Adriana, who’d previously been convicted for selling counterfeit 5-Hour Energy drinks filled with fake liquid, had already had her sentence commuted at the end of Trump’s first term after her brother donated to his 2020 campaign and got the ear of two attorneys close to the president, defense attorney Adam Katz and White House Counsel Stefan Passantino. After she and her brother were convicted of grocery fraud, they went back to Katz and Passantino, who helped secure a pardon for both of them last year.

“In recent months, often to justify immigration crackdowns or cuts to healthcare and food assistance programs, House Republicans have, hilariously, made ‘fighting fraud’ one of their central talking points,” the report concluded. “But convicted fraudster Donald Trump and the MAGA pardon industrial complex are all about committing fraud, protecting fraudulent schemes, and pardoning convicted fraudsters.”

Warning signs flash as 'eye-popping' economic figures spell doom for GOP voters: analyst

Matthew Chapman
August 20, 2026 
RAW STORY

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) speaks with members of the media while arriving at the U.S. Capitol ahead of a two-week Easter recess starting at the end of this week, in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 26, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

A panel of experts on CNN blasted through the ramifications of the U.S. national debt hitting the $40 trillion mark.

More than a decade ago, President Donald Trump promised he could eliminate the national debt, and instead introduced a series of tax cuts that accelerated its growth.

"These are certainly eye-popping numbers for voters to see, and come as voters continue to have concerns about the Trump administration's handling of the economy," said CNN's Arlette Saenz in a sidebar.

She added that "the climbing debt isn't just a GOP issue," as debt has been rising steadily since the early 2000s among presidents from both parties — although the debt as a percent of GDP has been a bit more variable.

Meanwhile, Mark McKinnon, a longtime Republican strategist, told anchor Kasie Hunt that the implications for the GOP this election cycle are grim.

"I'll tell you this, as a campaign guy: the last thing that I want to be talking about 70 days out from a midterm election is the fact that we're busting out $40 trillion in [debt], and the stock market has taken a 700-point dive," said McKinnon, saying that the whole situation is "a really bad stew for the president."

Trump, he noted, "had largely campaigned on a macro message of sort of ... listen, just elect me and I'll go break stuff," he added. "And people said, yeah, go break stuff. And then they get turned around, and they say, wait a minute, not everything."

Wild gaffe as Trump threatens to unleash military on sluggish bond market

Bennito L. Kelty
August 21, 2026 

RAW STORY

President Donald Trump on Friday answered a reporter's question about calming the turbulent bond market by saying he'll use military force.

Trump was asked whether he had spoken with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent about "another type of intervention" after bond yields climbed back to multi-year highs.

"The ultimate intervention is our military," Trump said. "And if we have to use that, we will."

The remark came as Trump seems to be escalating his military posture against Iran. Bessent told CNBC on Thursday that the U.S. likely would not need to restart large-scale combat with Iran, hours after Trump declared "economic D-day" on the country.

It also came shortly after Bessent announced that the Treasury would buy back far more of its own debt than planned. The step was meant to push interest rates down, according to reporting by CNBC. The Treasury acted after the rate on the government's 30-year bond hit its highest levels since 2007, Reuters reported.

Trump distanced himself from Bessent's move during his comments to reporters on Friday. Trump said he had not directed the intervention.

"No, not at all," Trump said. He added that Bessent is "a very capable man. He wanted to do it."

Bessent's fix barely lasted a day. Rates quickly climbed back to where they started after Trump escalated his standoff with Iran and drove oil prices higher, according to reporting by CNBC. The nation's total debt topped $40 trillion for the first time shortly after, which fueled investor anxiety over rising borrowing costs and deepening deficits, Reuters noted.

The Iran war is now in its sixth month. Trump has faced questions about how far he is willing to go. The Telegraph reported earlier this week that Trump was weighing a possible nuclear strike, a claim amplified by former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who said the administration had discussed the option in strategy meetings.

'Addled' Trump viciously mocked after flub: 'Bond market also two weeks away from a nuke?'

Bennito L. Kelty
August 21, 2026 
RAW STORY

President Donald Trump's threat to use military intervention to handle the troubled bond markets is baffling his online critics.

On Friday, a reporter asked Trump about increasing bond yields, which Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has struggled to contain after a failed debt buyback intervention earlier this week.

"Have you talked to Bessent about another type of intervention?" a reporter asked Trump.

"The ultimate intervention is our military," Trump responded. "And if we have to use that, we will."

The response from Trump prompted mockery as he seemed to conflate military intervention with a bond market intervention.

"Addled Trump threatens to use the military on bond traders," reacted Ron Filipkowski, the editor-in-chief of the political news network MeidasTouch, in a post on X.

"Is the bond market also two weeks away from a nuclear weapon?" asked Acyn Torabi, the senior digital editor for MeidasTouch, referring to reports that Trump was weighing a possible nuclear strike against Iran.

"Operation Epic Interest Rates," suggested political blogger and Kash Patel foe Jim Stewartson.

"Is Trump going to bomb the bond market?" wondered PatriotTakes, which covers right-wing extremism.

"I preferred it when yield curve control didn't involve the military," economist Justin Wolfers lamented. "But perhaps mine is a radical position."

During his comments, which came ahead of a South Carolina rally for Sen. Darline Graham (R-SC), Trump also pinned the initial debt buyback to Bessent as bond yields climbed shortly after the buyback.

"Did you direct Secretary Bessent to intervene in the bond market?" a reporter asked Trump.

"No, not at all," he responded. "He's a very capable man. He wanted to do it. He's very good at it. He's got a good touch for bonds and interest rates. He did it."

The question came shortly before he was asked about considering another intervention, but Trump still pivoted to talking about military force.

'Blustering' Trump's credibility called into question by conservative WSJ

Matthew Chapman
August 21, 2026 
RAW STORY


U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media before boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, U.S., en route to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, August 21, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci

The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board does not trust President Donald Trump's new vows to inflict economic devastation on Iran, as his war continues to flounder.

The president's "blustering threats, alternating with claims of imminent peace and victory, are doubted by friends and foe," wrote the board, which has been a frequent critic of Trump's strategy in Iran, if not his ultimate goal of dismantling the regime.

The Trump administration has vowed that all international trade into Iran will be shut down in retaliation for the global chaos caused by instability in the Strait of Hormuz — a claim that, the board wrote, they can't easily make good on.

"The question is whether all of this is a headline or a policy," wrote the board. "Only the latter, which Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says he’ll soon lay out, would give Tehran reason to fear." Iran has admitted the U.S. blockade is crushing their oil exports, the board noted, and yet "Dubai-Iran trade never leaves the Persian Gulf. The U.S. Navy doesn’t touch it."

The problem, the board continued, is that "It is no small ask of the Emiratis to cut off their dangerous and much-larger neighbor, especially when the U.S. hasn’t been able to protect them fully from Iran or restore free passage in the Strait of Hormuz. The U.A.E., America’s best Gulf ally during the war, may also fear that a financial crackdown could spark capital flight from Russia and others."

Bessent can continue to make promises, the board said, but for now, they look pretty empty with no game plan to get there.

A full-bore economic war against Iran "can make survival more difficult for the regime, but it will take more resolve and consistency than Mr. Trump has shown in the past six months," the board concluded.

Trump ally cashing in on vape firm accused of targeting kids and a brutal junta

Kathleen Culliton
August 20, 2026 

RAW STORY

U.S. President Donald Trump holds a hat after signing an executive order in the Oval Office, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S. February 25, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

A vape distributor accused of illegally peddling nicotine products to kids has found a champion in Washington, D.C., a former ally of President Donald Trump's who is raking in millions as a lobbyist.

His name is Roger Stone.

Mother Jones reported Thursday that Stone has earned more than $4 million as a lobbyist for firms such as vape-distributor Ecto World under the new administration.

"Trump’s return to the White House has been a tremendous boon to Stone, who not long ago was claiming he had been nearly bankrupted by legal fees," Mother Jones reported.

The report describes him as a "conspiracy theorist and political provocateur who was convicted of lying to Congress and witness tampering in the Trump–Russia investigation, sentenced to 40 months in prison, and subsequently pardoned by Trump."

Stone’s lobbying firm Drake Ventures has signed up a slew of clients that include the cryptocurrency investor “Bitcoin Jesus,” indicted last year on federal fraud charges, and the military junta in Myanmar, reportedly paying Stone $50,000 a month.

Crimes against humanity have spiked in the Junta since the military takeover in 2021, the report notes.

As for Ecto World, it stands accused in New York of trying to get people hooked on nicotine.

"New York State Attorney General Letitia James sued Ecto World and other vape companies for illegally distributing, marketing, and selling addictive candy- and fruit-flavored disposable nicotine products," the report states, "many produced in China, targeting sales to children and fueling the youth vaping epidemic."