Anna Young and Diana Glebova

” . . . yesterday Mexico accepted a record four deportation flights in one day! This comes in addition to unrestricted returns at the land border, the deportation of non-Mexicans and reinstatement of Remain-in-Mexico.”

Mexico refused to allow a plane carrying illegal migrants to land in the country on Thursday after President Trump dramatically beefed up security at the border and ordered mass raids and deportations since reclaiming the White House, according to military officials.

The deportation flight was blocked from leaving the US after two Air Force C-17 flights, each carrying about 80 deportees to Guatemala, successfully took off Thursday night, NBC reported, citing two defense officials and a third person familiar with the situation.

It was not immediately clear why Mexico blocked the plane, but tensions have flared between Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum since he threatened to slap 25% tariffs on Mexican goods in response to migrants illegally crossing the border.

A White House official told the outlet via text message that “the flights thing was an administrative issue and was quickly rectified.”

The flight rejection appeared to be confusion over the Department of Defense flight manifest, according to Fox News’ Bill Melugin, who cited a senior State Department official.

“Per the official, Mexico was full steam ahead to accept the deportations – and would have if there hadn’t been a misunderstanding regarding the paperwork,” he tweeted.

About 2,000 illegal migrants were deported to the country Thursday, with the nation detaining around 5,000 within its own borders, Melugin added.

As of Friday night, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has made 593 arrests, with 449 detainers lodged, the agency posted on X.

Trump on Monday declared a national emergency at the US-Mexico border and restricted refugees and asylum, saying he wants to halt all illegal entry and border crime, designating cartels and organized migrant gangs as foreign terrorist organizations.

Federal officials swept into sanctuary cities, including Boston, Denver, Philadelphia and Atlanta, on Trump’s first full day in office on Tuesday, nabbing about 308 illegal migrant criminals from more than a dozen nations.

The Trump administration has dramatically loosened restrictions on how ICE can conduct deportation raids – removing bans on operating in courthouses, churches and other places that illegal migrants had previously been shielded from immigration authorities.

The 47th president has also deployed 1,500 active-duty troops to the US-Mexico border, with many given orders to fly helicopters to help Border Patrol agents and assist with constructing barriers, Acting Defense Secretary Robert Salesses said Wednesday.

The use of military aircraft to carry out deportation flights is part of the Pentagon’s plan to fulfill Trump’s emergency declaration – marking the first time military planes have been used to transport deportees since President Dwight Eisenhower was in office, Reuters reported, citing an unnamed US official.

“Thanks to President Trump, yesterday Mexico accepted a record four deportation flights in one day! This comes in addition to unrestricted returns at the land border, the deportation of non-Mexicans and reinstatement of Remain-in-Mexico. Mexico has also mobilized 30,000 National Guard,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told The Post.

[…]

Via https://nypost.com/2025/01/24/us-news/mexico-refuses-to-accept-us-deportation-flight-as-trumps-immigration-overhaul-gets-into-full-swing/

By Konstantin Toropin and Thomas Novelly

The Pentagon is surging approximately 1,500 active-duty troops to the southern U.S. border under orders from President Donald Trump to assist in flying migrants out of the country as well as building barriers, as the commander in chief flexes his new authority and attempts to make good on a campaign promise to curb immigration into the country.

Those active-duty forces are made up of 1,000 Army soldiers and approximately 500 Marines. It also includes helicopters with associated crews and intelligence analysts “to support increased detection and monitoring efforts,” Acting Secretary of Defense Robert Salesses said in a statement.

[…]

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/01/22/1500-active-duty-troops-being-deployed-border-under-orders-trump.html

US President Donald Trump speaks to the press after signing executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on January 23, 2025. (Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT / AFP)

[…]

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/46014

The Octopus Game Part IV

Press TV (2024)

Film Review

https://www.presstv.ir/doc/Detail/2024/12/29/739924/Octopus-Game-US-military-Ukraine-Israel-American-foreign-policy-documentary-PressTV

This episode consists of three main threads. The first explores the continuity between the 1948 Zionist terrorist campaign against Christian and Muslim Palestinians and Israel’s current genocidal war against Gaza. Unlike the 1948 campaign of Zionist genocide, the current war on Gaza is garnering global media attention. The second thread traces the rise of the Palestinian resistance and Hamas. The third explores the early aftermath of Israel’s declaration of war against Gaza on October 8, 2023.

In 1948, some orders were so atrocious (such as killing children by cracking their skulls) that various Haganah members refused to carry them out. Input from Palestinian refugees the same year led the UN to call for a criminal investigation against the founders of the first Israeli government. Despite persistent claims that Palestinians refugees left their villages voluntarily before the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) arrived to occupy them, the Ben Gurion government finally ordered an investigation into the civilian massacres. After nearly 80 years, Israel has yet to release the report.

The Palestinian Resistance

In 1964, the Palestinian diaspora established the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) under the leadership of Yasser Arafat. After years of negotiation with the Israeli government, in 1993 the PLO signed an agreement (the Oslo Accords) to establish a Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza and to negotiate its evolution into a fully independent Palestinian state. Many Palestinians rejected this agreement as it denied the majority of Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homeland (it’s illegal under international law for an occupying power to drive indigenous people from their homeland). As a result many many Palestinians shifted their support from the secular PLO to Islamic Palestinian resistance groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

• 1999 – at Israel’s request, Jordanian government expels the Hamas leadership, who moves their headquarters to Qatar.
• 2000 – Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon leads IDF troops into the sacred Al Axa mosque in Jerusalem,* triggering the first Intifada (Palestinian uprising)
• 2001 – Hamas builds and fires the first Kazan rockets into the occupied territories (Israel), forcing them to adopt a comprehensive missile defense system (the Iron Dome) with US supplied missiles.
• 2003 – Arafat falls ill and Mahmood Abba assumes leadership of the Palestinian authority.
• 2004 – after numerous assassination attempts, Israel finally succeeds in assassinating Arafat.**
• 2004 – Israel built separation barriers around illegal (under international law) Israeli settlements in occupied Gaza and the West Bank. The International Court of Justice also declares these barriers illegal under international law, a move endorsed by nearly the entire UN General Assembly.
• 2005 – Israel withdraws the IDF from Gaza and dismantles all Israeli settlements there, exercising de facto control over Gaza (with Egyptian cooperation) through periodic blockades of food, water and electricity entering Gaza.
• 2006 – in January the Palestinian Authority orders the first free election for the Palestinian Authority Legislative Council (representing both the West Bank and Gaza). Hamas wins 74 out of 132 seats. Israel responds by assassinating eight Hamas commanders.
• 2007 – Israel carries out 22-day bombing campaign against Gaza, employing illegal white phosphorus and depleted uranium and killing 1,300 civilians

Israel’s Current War on Gaza

October 8, 2023 – the US orders the aircraft carrier USS Gerald A Ford to the eastern Mediterranean

October 10, 2023 – Israel bombs Damascus and Aleppo (in Syria) and  the Islamic University of Gaza in the West Bank. Israel also blocks  humanitarian aid convoy attempting to enter Gaza at the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt.

October 14 – the UN declares UN Refugee and Relief Assistance (UNRWA) shelters are no longer a safe zone for civilians as Israel is bombing them.

October 15 – Israel restores water and humanitarian food and medicine convoys via the Rafah crossing but makes food deliveries impossible by bombing them and the civilians they assist. The US government orders the USS Eisenhower to eastern Mediterranean.

*The October 7 Hamas attack on the Zionist musical festival was named for this event.

**Most likely with polonium. See The Assassination of Yassar Arafat

Ben Bartee

Of course, the big news comes with possibly an even bigger caveat: according to the WSJ’s source, bird flu might be exempt from the temporary ban, which would beg the question: why? 

If the gain-of-function pause should apply to anything, it should be to the virus that the public health authorities have promised over and over and over would be the trigger for pandemic 2.0.

This is not a permanent ban, and ostensibly it does not apply to private-sector actors.

But let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth.

Via Wall Street Journal (emphasis added):

The Trump administration is preparing an executive order that would halt federal funding, at least temporarily, for a risky and controversial kind of research into viruses that makes the pathogens more dangerous or contagious.

The goal of the order would be to stop scientists with U.S. funding from conducting “gain-of-function” research on viruses that could endanger human health, people familiar with the plans said. 

Some viruses, such as the H5N1 bird-flu pathogen, might be exempt from the order, one of the people said. 

The order hasn’t been finalized, and its specifics are a work in progress, the person said.

*Some Republicans have blamed the Covid-19 pandemic on gain-of-function research. Defenders say it helps scientists assess the potential of pathogens to infect humans and find ways to combat them.

“Some Republicans” blame COVID-19 on gain-of-function research? How about various American spy agencies, the House Oversight Committee that did a two-year investigation into the issue, and “anyone with common sense”?

[…]

Via https://pjmedia.com/benbartee/2025/01/24/big-win-trump-to-halt-gain-of-function-viral-research-via-executive-order-per-report-n4936315

By Yuval Abraham

Microsoft has a “footprint in all major military infrastructures” in Israel, and sales of the company’s cloud and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli army have skyrocketed since the beginning of its onslaught on Gaza, according to leaked commercial records from Israel’s Defense Ministry and files from Microsoft’s Israeli subsidiary.

The documents reveal that dozens of units in the Israeli army have purchased services from Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, Azure, in recent months — including units in the air, ground, and naval forces, as well as the elite intelligence squad, Unit 8200. Microsoft has also provided the military with extensive access to OpenAI’s GPT-4 language model, the engine behind ChatGPT, thanks to the close partnership between the two companies.

These revelations are the product of an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call in collaboration with The Guardian. It is based in part on documents obtained by Drop Site News, which has published its own story. The investigation shows how the Israeli army deepened its reliance on civilian tech giants after October 7, and comes amid growing protests by cloud company employees who fear that the technology they developed has helped Israel commit war crimes.

[…]

Via https://www.972mag.com/microsoft-azure-openai-israeli-army-cloud/

Sputnik

MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that he is ready to talk calmly with US President Donald Trump on all areas that are of interest to both countries.

“We should meet, based on today’s realities, to talk calmly about all those areas that are of interest to both the US and Russia. We are ready, but, I repeat, this depends first of all on the decisions and choices of the current US administration,” Putin said during his visit to Moscow State University.

Russia can have many points of contact with the US administration, including economic issues, Putin said, adding that Russia and the United States have a lot to talk about on economy and energy issues.

“What is typical for the Russian and American economies? We are not only one of the largest producers of energy resources, but we are also the largest consumers of them. This means that for both our economy and the US economy, too high prices are bad, because it is necessary to produce domestically. Using energy resources, it is necessary to produce other goods within the country. And too low prices are also very bad, because it undermines the investment opportunities of energy companies,” he said.

Putin remarked that he has always had businesslike and pragmatic relations with Trump, noting that Moscow welcomes Trump’s statements about a willingness to work together and remains open to it.

“Even if we hear about the possibility of imposing additional sanctions on Russia, I doubt that he will make decisions that will harm the US economy itself,” Putin said.
Trump is “not only an intelligent person, he is a pragmatic person,” Putin added.

The previous administration of US President Joe Biden refused to contact with Russia, and it is not Moscow’s fault, Putin noted. Furthermore, Russia has never refused to use the US dollar in foreign trade transactions.

“We did not abandon the dollar. It was the former US administration that made it impossible for us to use it as a currency for settlements. I think that decision has caused significant harm to the United States,” Putin said.

Ukraine Crisis

Russia is ready for talks on the Ukraine conflict, but there are issues that need attention, the Russian president added. The problem is that Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky has banned himself from holding peace talks with Russia.

“It is well-known that the current leader of the regime in Kiev, when he was still fairly legitimate, signed a decree banning negotiations. How can negotiations be resumed now if they are forbidden?” Putin said.

Putin added that it was difficult to talk seriously about any dialogue with Kiev while this ban was still in place.

“However, as long as this ban isn’t lifted, it is hard to say that these negotiations can be properly started and, the most importantly, concluded. Of course, it is possible to make some preliminary outlines, yet it is quite difficult to consider any serious negotiations under the conditions of the ban on the Ukrainian side,” Putin said.

Putin added that the authorities in Kiev receive hundreds of billions from their sponsors, and he believes the same sponsors of the Kiev regime should force Zelensky to lift the ban on talks.

The Russian president also added he agreed with Trump that if he had been reelected US president in 2020 the crisis in Ukraine could have been avoided.

“I cannot but agree with him on that if he were president, if the victory had not been stolen from him in 2020, then the crisis that broke out in Ukraine in 2022 would have possibly never happened,” Putin suggested.

[…]

Via https://sputnikglobe.com/20250124/putin-ukraine-crisis-could-have-been-avoided-if-2020-us-election-wasnt-stolen-1121487752.html

By Karl Jaeger

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is urging Elon Musk, chair of the Trump administration’s newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), to target “unnecessary” federal enforcement against marijuana consumers and businesses as a key way to reduce spending by the federal government.

In a letter sent to Musk on Thursday, Warren laid out a series of recommendations for DOGE that she said would translate into upwards of $2 trillion in savings over the next decade. One of those recommendations concerned the federal government’s spending on cannabis enforcement.

“The United States could save hundreds of millions of dollars each year by reducing wasteful spending on unnecessary federal enforcement actions and detention,” Warren wrote. “For example, almost half of states have legalized recreational marijuana, yet federal arrests for marijuana possession account for roughly a quarter of all drug possession arrests, even though federal sentences for marijuana possession are rare.”

The senator also pointed out that “the Drug Enforcement Administration [DEA] and Customs and Border Patrol [CBP] continue to raid marijuana businesses and seize marijuana plants, including in states where marijuana is legal.”

“These arrests and seizures unnecessarily drain federal resources,” Warren said.

Warren cited reporting from Marijuana Moment and other outlets on DEA’s ongoing cannabis seizures, with the agency reporting that it eradicated more than 5.7 million marijuana plants in 2022, for example.

However, DEA has faced more recent criticism after failing to release updated annual data on marijuana-related arrests and seizures in 2024 as it has done in prior years.

With respect to CBP, the agency recently implored a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit from licensed New Mexico marijuana businesses that claimed the agencies have been unconstitutionally seizing state-regulated marijuana products and detaining industry workers at interior checkpoints.

[…]

Via https://www.marijuanamoment.net/elizabeth-warren-pushes-elon-musk-to-cut-federal-marijuana-enforcement-through-new-doge-agency/

White House

PROVIDING AMERICANS THE TRUTH AFTER SIX DECADES OF SECRECY: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order entitled Declassification of Records Concerning the Assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.

• The Executive Order establishes the policy that, more than 50 years after these assassinations, the victims’ families and the American people deserve the truth.
• Specifically, the Order directs the Director of National Intelligence and other appropriate officials to:
  • (1) Present a plan within 15 days for the full and complete release of all John F. Kennedy assassination records; and
  • (2) Immediately review the records relating to the Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations and present a plan for their full and complete release within 45 days.

PRESIDENT TRUMP IS ENDING THE ENDLESS DELAYS: In his first term, President Trump ordered agencies to move toward disclosing more information about the John F. Kennedy assassination, and now he is ordering that the work be completed.

• The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 required all records related to the assassination be released in 25 years, absent a presidential certification that:
  • Continued postponement is necessary due to an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations; and
  • Such identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.
• In October 2017 and April 2018 certifications, President Trump directed agencies to reevaluate redactions and disclose any information that no longer warranted withholding.
  • President Biden delayed disclosure in 2021, 2022, and 2023.
• In this Order, President Trump finds that continued withholding of the John F. Kennedy records is not in the public interest and is long overdue. He also concludes that releasing the Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. assassination records is in the public interest.

PRESIDENT TRUMP DELIVERS ON PROMISE TO RELEASE ASSASSINATION RECORDS: President Trump promised during his campaign to release assassination records to give Americans the truth.

• President Trump pledged on multiple occasions to release the JFK files, specifically stating in June 2024 that he would do so “early on.”
• President Trump: “When I return to the White House, I will declassify and unseal all JFK assassination related documents. It’s been 60 years, time for the American people to know the TRUTH!”

[…]

Via https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/01/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-orders-declassification-of-jfk-rfk-and-mlk-assassination-files/