Category: State department
Rubio reportedly reveals Trump’s plan to acquire Greenland to bolster US defense
Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly told lawmakers that the Trump administration has aspirations to purchase Greenland from Denmark, tempering rumors that officials are considering forcibly seizing the island.
‘The United States is eager to build lasting commercial relationships that benefit Americans and the people of Greenland.’
During a closed briefing on Monday, Rubio and other administration officials briefed lawmakers about the operation to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and the plans for the country’s future, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Citing individuals said to be familiar with the recent briefing, the WSJ stated that Rubio “played down the idea that the U.S. could seize Greenland by force.” The report claimed that administration officials refused to rule out the possibility of an invasion.
However, the outlet noted that U.S. and European officials have reported no indications that the Trump administration is preparing for a military invasion of the self-governing Danish territory.
President Donald Trump told reporters on Sunday, “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and the European Union needs us to have it — and they know that.”
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Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images
“President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States, and it’s vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated. “The president and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the U.S. military is always an option at the commander in chief’s disposal.”
Trump expressed interest in purchasing Greenland during his first term. He has insisted that controlling the island is essential for protecting the Arctic from Russia and China.
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Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images
“The United States is eager to build lasting commercial relationships that benefit Americans and the people of Greenland,” a State Department spokesperson told Blaze News. “Our common adversaries have been increasingly active in the Arctic. That is a concern that the United States, the Kingdom of Denmark, and NATO Allies share.”
The spokesperson added that Trump is committed to the United States’ relationship with Greenland, underscored by his decision to designate Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry (R) as special envoy.
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Foreigners Scheme To Keep Their H-1Bs As Trump Admin Throttles Cheap Labor Pipeline
‘Cancelled my flight’
‘Disastrous program’: Trump administration pauses ‘diversity’ visa Brown University shooter used to enter United States
The United States has paused a visa program after shocking details emerged in the Brown University shooting investigation.
Late Thursday night, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the pause of the DV1 program, a visa lottery system that the Brown University shooter, identified as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, reportedly used to obtain a green card.
‘At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing USCIS to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.’
“The Brown University shooter, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente entered the United States through the diversity lottery immigrant visa program (DV1) in 2017 and was granted a green card. This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” Secretary Noem said on X. “In 2017, President Trump fought to end this program, following the devastating NYC truck ramming by an ISIS terrorist, who entered under the DV1 program, and murdered eight people.”
Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
“At President Trump’s direction, I am immediately directing USCIS to pause the DV1 program to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program,” Noem added.
Valente, who is also believed to be responsible for the recent slaying of an MIT physics professor, was found dead inside a storage facility Thursday night.
The DV1 program, also known as the Diversity Immigrant Visa program, makes up to 55,000 visas available to immigrants from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. The program is “random and blind to the number of family members who might immigrate with the selectee,” according to the State Department website.
The 2026 visa lottery drew from 20,822,624 applicants from over 170 counties all around the world, according to State Department statistics.
The top 10 countries, from highest volume to lowest are: Egypt, Russia, Algeria, Ukraine, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iran, Kenya, Nepal, and Morocco. Other countries that broke 3,000 are Cameroon, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkey.
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Calibri, Times New Roman, and the Trump Administration’s Symbolic Battle over Symbols
The culture wars, not content with bending and blocking the words we read, apparently come for the typeface in which…
Convicted hacker twins who landed jobs as federal contractors nabbed for allegedly deleting government databases
Muneeb and Sohaib Akhter, a pair of convicted hackers based in Alexandria, Virginia, were arrested on Wednesday over an alleged conspiracy to destroy government databases and other crimes.
After doing prison time for wire fraud and conspiring to hack into the U.S. State Department, the Akhter twins, one of whom previously served as a cybersecurity contractor with the State Department, managed to secure jobs as federal contractors — working as engineers for Opexus.
‘Their actions jeopardized the security of government systems.’
Opexus, a company that handles sensitive data for most federal agencies and has received over $50 million in contracts from various agencies over the past decade, determined earlier this year that it had been compromised in February by two employees.
A Bloomberg investigation revealed in May that after one of the agencies with which Opexus was working, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, flagged the twins as possible threats on account of their criminal records, the duo were fired on Feb. 18.
The company later discovered that while being fired and immediately afterward, the twins allegedly accessed sensitive documents and compromised or scrubbed dozens of databases, including those containing data from the General Services Administration and the Internal Revenue Service.
The FBI, FDIC Office of Inspector General, Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General, and Homeland Security Investigations investigated the case.
The brothers were indicted on Nov. 13 for allegedly working to harm Opexus and its U.S. government clients “by accessing computers without authorization, issuing commands to prevent others from modifying the databases before deletion, deleting databases, stealing information, and destroying evidence of their unlawful activities,” the DOJ said in a release.
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Muneeb Akhter. Photo by Evelyn Hockstein/Washington Post via Getty Images
According to the indictment, Muneeb Akhter allegedly deleted approximately 96 databases storing U.S. government information — including databases containing records and documents related to Freedom of Information Act matters as well as sensitive federal investigative files.
Muneeb Akhter is also accused of asking an artificial intelligence tool how they could cover their tracks after deleting a DHS database.
After he got fired from Opexus, Muneeb Akhter allegedly obtained data from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and is accused further of stealing copies of IRS information including federal tax information and other identifying information for at least 450 individuals.
Opexus did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.
“These defendants abused their positions as federal contractors to attack government databases and steal sensitive government information,” said Matthew Galeotti, acting assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, in a statement. “Their actions jeopardized the security of government systems and disrupted agencies’ ability to serve the American people.”
Muneeb Akhter has been charged with conspiracy to commit computer fraud and to destroy records, two counts of computer fraud, theft of federal records, and two counts of aggravated identity theft. His twin, Sohaib Akhter, was charged with conspiracy to commit computer fraud and to destroy records and computer fraud.
While Sohaib Akhter faces a maximum penalty of six years in prison, Muneeb Akhter faces a mandatory minimum penalty of two years of prison time for each aggravated identity theft count and a maximum penalty of 45 years for the other charges.
The duo pleaded guilty in 2015 to a different set of crimes.
Muneeb Akhter hacked into the website of a cosmetics company and stole thousands of customers’ credit card and personal information. He and his brother used the stolen data to pay for flights, hotel stays, various goods, and attendance at professional conferences. Muneeb Akhter proceeded to hand off the stolen data to a “dark net” operator who cut him in on the profits from the sales.
The other brother, meanwhile, used his contract position at the State Department in 2015 to steal personally identifiable data belonging to various people including co-workers and a federal law enforcement agent who was investigating him.
According to the Justice Department, Sohaib Akhter later hatched a scheme to ensure perpetual access to various State Department systems and, with the help of his twin, attempted to install an electronic collection device inside a State Department office, which would have enabled the hackers to remotely steal federal data.
Years earlier, Muneeb Akhter hacked into a Maryland-based private data aggregation company that he was performing contract work for, giving his brother access to a database of federal contract information to give their technology company an upper hand when bidding for contracts and clients.
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Trump Admin Blocks Entry Of Afghans After Deadly National Guard Shooting
Trump Admin Blocks Entry Of Afghans After Deadly National Guard Shooting
US Foreign Assistance as a Means of Soft Power
The Marshall Plan to rebuild post-World War II Europe has been acclaimed as the most successful foreign assistance program in…
Europeans want US missiles to defend them, not America — and Rubio’s had enough of their hypocrisy
Secretary of State Marco Rubio called out European officials on Wednesday for criticizing America’s self-defense while expecting the U.S. to provide military support for their own.
The Trump administration has obliterated at least 19 alleged narco-terrorist drug boats since Sept. 2 with the stated aim of “protecting the homeland and killing these cartel terrorists who wish to harm our country and its people.”
‘I don’t think that the European Union gets to determine … how the United States defends its national security.’
President Donald Trump has suggested that each drug boat vaporized by U.S. fighter jets, AC-130J gunships, and drones amounts to 25,000 American lives saved.
A day after War Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the U.S. had sunk an additional two boats in the Eastern Pacific, altogether killing six alleged narco-terrorists, French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot joined the chorus of foreign dignitaries who have been complaining about the strikes.
Barrot reportedly said at the G7 summit on Tuesday, “We have observed with concern the military operations in the Caribbean region, because they violate international law and because France has a presence in this region through its overseas territories, where more than a million of our compatriots reside.”
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Photo by Omar Zaghloul/Anadolu via Getty Images
When confronted with questions about the U.S. maritime strikes during a meeting with Latin American leaders last week, the European Union’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said that the EU upholds international law and “international law is very clear on that. You can use force for two reasons: one is self-defense, the other one is the U.N. Security Council resolution.”
Rubio addressed the European pearl-clutching on Wednesday, politely suggesting to reporters that the continentals should pound sand.
“I don’t think that the European Union gets to determine what international law is, and what they certainly don’t get to determine is how the United States defends its national security,” said Rubio. “The United States is under attack from organized criminal narco-terrorists in our hemisphere, and the president is responding in the defense of our country.”
After indicating that the Europeans are out of their depth, Rubio hammered America’s allies across the Atlantic for their apparent hypocrisy.
“I do find it interesting that all these countries want us to send, you know, and supply, for example, nuclear-capable Tomahawk missiles to defend Europe, but when the United States positions aircraft carriers in our hemisphere where we live, somehow that’s a problem,” said the secretary of state.
Rubio added, “The president ordered it in defense of our country. It continues. It’s ongoing. It can stop tomorrow if [terrorist cartels] stop sending drug boats.”
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‘Patently inequitable’: Ketanji Brown Jackson whines after SCOTUS stays Biden judge’s order in trans passport case
The U.S. Supreme Court delivered the Trump administration a victory on Thursday, prompting bitterness not only from trans activists but from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who suggested that the “regrettable” ruling might leave transgender-identifying individuals at risk of “harassment and bodily invasions.”
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 20 directing his secretaries of state and homeland security to ensure that government-issued identification documents, including passports and visas, “accurately reflect the holder’s sex.”
‘Today, the Court refuses to answer equity’s call.’
The Trump administration’s reversal of the Biden-era policy that enabled people to choose their own sex marker as well as a third marker, “X,” instead of an “M” or an “F” marker, was poorly received by some radicals.
Keen to have the government continue indulging their delusions, several transvestites joined the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Massachusetts, and Covington & Burling LLP in a lawsuit over the passport policy in February.
In April, U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick, a Biden appointee, granted them a preliminary injunction preventing the State Department’s enforcement of Trump’s Executive Order 14168 while the lawsuit played out — but only as it applied to six of the plaintiffs. Months later, Kobick granted a class certification request and expanded the scope of her injunction.
After its appeal was rejected by the First Circuit Court of Appeals, the Trump administration filed an emergency stay request to the Supreme Court.
To the chagrin of non-straight activists, the high court granted the stay on Thursday, stating, “Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth — in both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment.”
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Photo by Hyoung Chang/Denver Post/Getty Images
The court noted further in its unsigned order, which was opposed by all three liberal justices, that the “respondents have failed to establish that the Government’s choice to display biological sex ‘lack[s] any purpose other than a bare … desire to harm a politically unpopular group.’ … Nor are respondents likely to prevail in arguing that the State Department acted arbitrarily and capriciously by declining to depart from Presidential rules that Congress expressly required it to follow.”
The high court concluded that absent a stay, the government would suffer a form of irreparable injury as the Biden judge’s injunction could lead to foreign affairs implications.
Justice Jackson noted in her dissenting opinion that “as is becoming routine, the Government seeks an emergency stay of a District Court’s preliminary injunction pending appeal. As is also becoming routine, this Court misunderstands the assignment.”
After casting doubt on her “obliging” colleagues’ comprehension skills, Jackson — whose past opinions have bewildered her conservative and liberal peers alike — characterized the reality-affirming passport policy as “new” and legally questionable. Then sentences later, she acknowledged that it was not new so much as a reversion to the government’s long-standing policy as it existed until at least the early 1990s.
Jackson argued that the cross-dressing plaintiffs face greater harm absent injunctive relief than the government would face absent a stay, and expressed doubt whether the government faces any irreparable harm at all.
“But the Court somehow sees fit to grant the Government’s stay request regardless, waving away its abject failure to show any irreparable harm and promoting a patently inequitable outcome to boot,” wrote Jackson.
Jackson suggested further that the indication of an individual’s actual sex on a passport amounts to a concrete injury and echoed the Biden-appointed district court judge, writing that “transgender people who encounter obstacles to obtaining gender-congruent identity documents are almost twice as likely to experience suicidal ideation, and report more severe psychological distress, than transgender people who do not face such barriers.”
In her conclusion, the leftist justice complained that “today, the Court refuses to answer equity’s call.”
Jon Davidson, senior counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, joined Jackson in complaining about the court’s decision, stating, “This is a heartbreaking setback for the freedom of all people to be themselves and fuel on the fire the Trump administration is stoking against transgender people and their constitutional rights.”
“This decision will cause immediate, widespread, and irreparable harm to all those who are being denied accurate identity documents,” said Jessie Rossman, legal director of the ACLU of Massachusetts. “The Trump administration’s policy is an unlawful attempt to dehumanize, humiliate, and endanger transgender, nonbinary, and intersex Americans, and we will continue to seek its ultimate reversal in the courts.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi referred to the court’s ruling as the administration’s “24th victory at the Supreme Court’s emergency docket” and noted, “Today’s stay allows the government to require citizens to list their biological sex on their passport. In other words: there are two sexes, and our attorneys will continue fighting for that simple truth.”
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