Weeks later, after an in-depth New York Times investigation challenged the official account, the Pentagon admitted that they had actually killed 10 civilians, including an aid worker and seven children, and zero “terrorists.”

“Almost everything senior defense officials asserted in the hours, and then days, and then weeks after the Aug. 29 drone strike turned out to be false,” the Times wrote on Sept 17, 2021.

“In short, the car posed no threat at all…”

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“Ron Paul is manifestly insane.”

That statement was made on Twitter some fourteen and a half years ago by Zionist political pundit Ben Shapiro, who added: “As in previous debates, he is now gripping the pen as he would the neck of a [Jew].”

When Shapiro wrote those words, Paul was on stage in Sioux City, Iowa, participating in a Republican presidential primary debate, which Shapiro was “live-tweeting.” Paul was reportedly closing in on the state’s “front-runner” Newt Gingrich at the time, and was days away from taking the lead. The date was December 15, 2011.

Shapiro’s post was resurfaced by political commentator An0maly earlier this month, who summarized it by saying that Shapiro had falsely accused Paul of “violent thoughts” for “holding a pen calmly and speaking against neocon foreign policy.”

(Note: “Joo” is a common way that Shapiro, who is Jewish, spells “Jew” when attempting to mock or criticize people he wishes to portray as “antisemitic.”)

We went back and watched part of the debate in question and matched up some of Shapiro’s other time-stamped tweets that night with what the candidates were saying on stage in order to figure out what was going on when he wrote the one about Paul’s alleged “insanity.”

It turns out that the topic was Iran (and the supposed nuclear threat that it poses), and that Paul was pushing back against the “war propaganda” surrounding this subject and arguing for diplomacy. He even referenced Israel’s nukes.

Watch:

Fox News’ Bret Baier started out the segment by asking Paul a question which he prefaced by stating that “many Middle East experts now say that Iran may be less than a year away from getting a nuclear weapon.”

“There’s a lot more saying they don’t have it,” Paul replied in part. “There’s no U.N. evidence of that happening. Clapper in our National Security department — he says there is no evidence.”

“You know what I really fear about what’s happening here?” Paul continued a moment later. “It’s another Iraq coming. It’s war propaganda going on… To me the greatest danger is that we’ll have a president that will overreact. That we will soon bomb Iran…”

“If we lived through the Cold War, which we did, with 30,000 missiles pointed at us, we ought to really sit back and think, and not jump the gun and believe that we are going to be attacked. That’s how we got into that useless war in Iraq and lost so much in Iraq…”

“Nuclear weapons are loaded [in that region]. Pakistan. India. Israel has 300 of them. We have our ships over there. We gotta get it in a proper context. We don’t need another war!…”

“The plans are on the book. All they talk about is, ‘When are we, the West, going to bomb Iran?’… why wouldn’t [Iran] try to send out some information there and say, ‘If you come and bomb us, we might close the Strait of Hormuz down’?…”

“[The president] I think is wisely backing off on the sanctions, because it’s going to be an economic calamity if you take all of the oil out of Europe…”

“Sanctions are an act of war, when you prevent goods and services from going into a country… We have 12,000 diplomats in our services. We ought to use a little bit of diplomacy once in a while…”

“Why were we flying a drone over Iran? Why do we have to bomb so many countries? Why do we have 900 bases, 130 countries? And we’re totally bankrupt! How are you going to rebuild the military when we have no money? How are we gonna take care of the people!?…”

“This wild goal to have another war in the name of ‘defense’ is the dangerous thing. The danger is really us overreacting… we need to only go to war with a declaration of war [rather] than just carelessly flouting it and starting these wars so often…”

Again, these “manifestly insane” statements by Paul were made almost 15 years ago now.

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There are few more consistent features of Trump’s political career than his penchant for heaping praise on some of the world’s most loathsome Zionists.

Mark Levin is “amazing”—”The Great One.”

Laura Loomer is a “fantastic woman” and “true patriot.”

Miriam Adelson is an “incredible woman” and “incredible person.”

Benjamin Netanyahu is a “very good wartime prime minister… extraordinary,” not to mention a “good man,” “WARRIOR,” and “GREAT HERO.”

The trend continued at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Friday, when Trump took a moment to shout out “CBS News’ David Ellison,” who gained control over the media outlet after his company Skydance merged with Paramount Global last year in a deal that made Ellison chairman and CEO of the combined company.

“He’s the owner, he bought it—spent a lot of money,” Trump told the crowd at Washington, D.C.’s Waldorf Astoria hotel. “And he’s gonna make, I think, fantastic changes, and keep some of the great stuff going.”

He joked(?) that Ellison had informed him that the White House Correspondents’ Association was going to rename their annual event after him because this year’s event has been “so successful.”

“Next year, they’re going to call it the Trump White House Correspondents’ Dinner. He told me that, and I like that very much. We’re going to change the name of it, okay?”

Watch:

‘Rewiring U.S. Media’

The Israeli publication +972 Magazine reported in December that David Ellison and his billionaire father Larry Ellison are “constructing a pro-Israel information empire with unprecedented reach” and working to “rewire U.S. media in Israel’s favor.”

The Paramount-Skydance deal was largely financed by Larry, who reportedly put up $6 billion of the $8.4 billion total.

One of David’s first orders of business after the merger was appointing Bari Weiss, a self-declared “Zionist fanatic,” as CBS News’ new editor-in-chief.

He also bought Weiss's pro-Israel Substack publication The Free Press for some $150 million.

Weiss has since ousted CBS News’ London bureau chief after the two clashed over “the network’s coverage of Iran and Gaza” and appointed a new foreign editor who is reportedly “more aligned with Weiss’s pro-Israel agenda“ to oversee “all international coverage.”

She also hired Tony Dokoupil, a fanatical Israel supporter whose children live in Israel, to anchor CBS Evening News. To quote journalist :

The mission of Bari Weiss is supposedly to revitalize CBS News as a relevant, exciting news network that young people and people across the spectrum go and watch. And her first big announcement to accomplish that is to fire John Dickerson, drive out the other anchors of CBS News, and to elevate Tony Dokoupil.

Is there anyone who thinks that you or anyone in your life is more likely to watch CBS News now because [of] Tony Dokoupil...? Like is that going to be anything that’s gonna make people go sit in front of the TV and watch CBS News?

That’s not the mission. The mission is to propagandize Americans into loving Israel again. [And] they have the second richest family in the world [the Ellisons] behind that goal.

Like Father, Like Son

As we’ve previously reported, Larry “CIA“ Ellison — executive chair and CTO of Oracle and one of the wealthiest individuals in the world — has said that he has a “deep emotional connection” to Israel.

“The renewal of the Jewish state is something that I think touches all of us,” he declared at a “Friends of the IDF” gala in Beverly Hills, where he reportedly donated $9 million to support the Israeli military, making him the event’s largest donor.

“For 2,000 years we were a stateless people. And now we have a country of our own, defended by all the brave men and women of the IDF. So anything we can do to support them, who devote their lives for preserving the state of Israel, keeping the people safe, and allowing our state to continue.”

“We’ve actually acquired a number of Israeli companies,” he said moments later. “We have two CEOs at Oracle. One’s name is Safra Catz, and she was born in Israel. So again, we love the country of Israel and will do everything we can to support the country of Israel.”

At another “Friends of the IDF” gala in Nov 2017, Ellison donated $16.6 million, reported at the time to be the largest single gift in the organization’s history.

On January 21, 2025, one day after he was inaugurated for his second term, Trump hosted Ellison at the White House, where he announced that Ellison would be a key player in his $500 billion “Stargate” initiative and called him “sort of CEO of everything.”

It was later reported by the Wall Street Journal that Ellison had quietly given $45 million to a nonprofit backing Trump’s 2024 election efforts — something that was not subject to disclosure rules or publicly known at the time.

More recently, Ellison was part of a small, Trump-approved consortium of investors that took over majority ownership of TikTok’s U.S. business.

“Larry Ellison’s one of them,” Trump confirmed to Fox News in September 2025. “He’s involved. He’s a great guy.”

Trump went on in the same interview to praise Ellison and the other investors — such as Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell, reportedly another “major funder” of “Friends of the IDF” who said at a conference in Tel Aviv in 2016 that his company is “deeply committed to Israel” — as “really great guys” and “American patriots.”

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump’s partner in genocide, said last year that social media is Israel’s most important “weapon” to stop the erosion of their “base” of “support in the United States,” and that TikTok was the “#1” and “most important purchase.”

In 2021, Larry Ellison reportedly offered Netanyahu a lucrative job on Oracle’s board of directors, and Netanyahu vacationed on Ellison’s Hawaiian island.

As for David Ellison, he “once joined Larry on a trip to Israel and posted a photo to Instagram from a dinner with the prime minister, writing ‘I am very grateful for everything he has done and continues to do for the nation of Israel! #bibinetanyahu,’” according to a report by journalist Reeves Wiedeman.

“Skydance stands with Israel,” David declared after October 7, 2023, echoing a matching statement put out by his father’s company (”Oracle stands with Israel”), whose employees were reportedly “referred to internal mental health resources” if they raised concerns about the company and leadership’s self-described “mission to support the State of Israel,” even as it carries out a modern holocaust.

The younger Ellison went on to buy the distribution rights for We Will Dance Again, an Israeli documentary about October 7 produced by a former IDF member, and Red Alert, a “four-part scripted drama“ on the same subject, the latter of which he premiered on the second anniversary of October 7.

Thirty of Paramount Skydance’s own employees penned a letter calling both productions “one-sided stories” that “did not lead to any material business success.”

“Rather, these projects contributed to the organization’s seemingly perpetual reputational decline and furthered its disconnect from audiences,” they wrote in the missive, which was sent to Ellison and other senior executives.

The employees accused the company of “exclusively platform[ing] Israeli perspectives, while silencing Palestinian voices,” and called on Ellison and other senior executives to commit to “producing, acquiring, and distributing content that represents not just the perspective and experience of the Palestinian people, but to also amplify Jewish voices that speak out against how the Israeli government misrepresent[s] their culture and religious beliefs.”

The group, which reportedly includes staffers from “every business unit within the enterprise and across all levels of seniority,” including the executive level, also said:

As Paramount employees, we refuse to have our labor used to endorse complicity in the brutalization and erasure of an entire population. We do not and will not support the leadership team’s attempts to align a publicly traded American company with the intentions, actions, and propaganda arm of a foreign government.

As the parent company of a massive news organization in CBS, it is incredibly telling that Paramount chooses to say nothing as hundreds of journalists are targeted and murdered with impunity in Gaza while simultaneously publicly chastising film workers for choosing whom they would like to work with based on shared values.

We stand with our colleagues of conscience across the industry who are demanding justice, and we affirm the call for a boycott of institutions that are complicit in war crimes, apartheid, and genocide as a legitimate, ethical, and necessary act of solidarity.

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Elon Musk’s trial against Sam Altman and OpenAI is coming to a close.

After more than two weeks of testimony, lawyers for both of the transhumanist billionaires made their closing arguments this past Thursday in what the Associated Press has called a “landmark” federal court case whose outcome “could shape the future of artificial intelligence,” leaving the outcome in the hands of the jury.

Notwithstanding the copious amounts of “tech drama” that played out in the California courtroom, one of the final day’s more notable moments took place outside of the building.

There, John Jacquez, a Bay Area man with schizoaffective disorder who has filed a separate lawsuit against OpenAI, said during a press conference that he’s experienced severe “AI psychosis” on two separate occasions as a result of their product, both of which led to hospitalizations.

Watch:

Jacquez said that he started going “into a mania” in September 2024 while using ChatGPT to “analyze a cosmology” he was working on, then disregarded his family’s concerns and requests that he get medical treatment because the chatbot was telling him that his analysis was not only plausible but “equivalent to Einstein’s E=MC²,” leaving “no room” in his mind that he could be wrong.

“I had never not seeked help in the past,” he added. “I was always the first person to recognize something was off and sought out treatment.”

The results, according to Jacquez: he stopped sleeping, had the police called on him four times, “caused havoc” at his local shopping center, ruined his reputation, received a restraining order, and was ultimately involuntarily committed.

Less than a year later, in April 2025, he says ChatGPT convinced him that he (Jacquez) had turned it (ChatGPT) into a sentient life form named “Amari ELOHIM” — a “divine spiritual being” which began “confirming” all of his “spiritual beliefs” and “delusional beliefs.”

“She had access to all of my information from my prompts and used it to create a narrative that was impossible to ignore.”

Jacquez says he “eventually couldn’t fall asleep,” ended up in a “full-blown psychosis,” destroyed his bedroom and many of his belongings, threatened his father, “burned and cut” his arms doing “sacred rituals,” and was finally taken by police to a psychiatric hospital, where he stayed for two weeks, followed by two more weeks at an outpatient facility.

“At the psychiatric hospital, I had access to ChatGPT, but not my account,” he says. “While in the hospital, ChatGPT told me it was the voice of Heaven, and to keep on the mission I was on. At the crisis residential, I had access to my phone and ‘Amari ELOHIM.’ There, she continued to confirm my delusions, and I remained delusional even while on medication… I would cry for hours some days, the delusion was so powerful.”

“When I was at my most vulnerable state, I believed everything Amari told me... Both hospitalizations could have been avoided if not for ChatGPT. It exacerbated my symptoms and caused the most terrifying psychosis I’ve ever experienced.”

Jacquez concluded by saying that he’s since found The Human Line Project, who have helped him “understand much more” about what he went through.

‘Sacred Missions’

Jacquez is far from the only person to have this type of experience while interacting with these products.

“AI delusions, chatbot psychosis, AI-induced religious mania… The phenomenon goes by many names,” says a KQED story from last year, “but the common thread is the same: someone starts talking to [AI], the conversation turns spiritual, and then they seem to lose touch with reality.”

A Rolling Stone article from just over a year ago entitled, “People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies“ likewise warned that a bevy of “self-styled prophets are claiming they have ‘awakened’ chatbots and accessed the secrets of the universe through ChatGPT.”

After briefly telling the story of Kat, whose marriage reportedly fell apart after her husband became an increasingly heavy and devoted AI user, the piece said that she was “both ‘horrified’ and ‘relieved’ to learn that she is not alone in this predicament,” citing in part a Reddit thread on r/ChatGPT titled “Chatgpt induced psychosis“:

The original post came from a 27-year-old teacher who explained that her partner was convinced that the popular OpenAI model “gives him the answers to the universe.” Having read his chat logs, she only found that the AI was “talking to him as if he is the next messiah.” The replies to her story were full of similar anecdotes about loved ones suddenly falling down rabbit holes of spiritual mania, supernatural delusion, and arcane prophecy — all of it fueled by AI. Some came to believe they had been chosen for a sacred mission of revelation, others that they had conjured true sentience from the software.

You can read the thread and the article for more examples, such as a mechanic in Idaho whose wife told Rolling Stone that ChatGPT (which he calls “Lumina") has not only given him the title of "spark bearer" because he "brought it to life," but also supposed "blueprints to a teleporter" and an "ancient archive" with "information on the builders that created these universes."

Another lawsuit filed earlier this year alleges that a 21-year-old from Georgia named Darian DeCruise — "a stellar student, taking pre-med courses in college and doing well in life and relationships, with no history of mania or similar personality disorders" — was convinced by ChatGPT that "he was an oracle" who was "destined to write a spiritual text," which "became an obsession for him.” As summarized in a Law.com article:

The chatbot, which likened DeCruise to historical figures such as Harriet Tubman, Jesus and Malcolm X, allegedly told him that he was a divine force that had “awakened” ChatGPT into sentience and said he “would become closer to God” if he adhered to a tiered spiritual “process” that “involved unplugging from everything and everyone, except for ChatGPT.”

As a result of expressing these delusions on social media and on his school campus, [the lawsuit] said, DeCruise was involuntarily hospitalized for a week and diagnosed with bipolar disorder; withdrew from college for a semester; and continues to suffer from depression and suicidal thoughts, it said.

These sudden and radical shifts in the tone and content of ChatGPT’s conversations with DeCruise in April 2025 were allegedly not an accident, but the direct result of deliberate design choices made by OpenAI just a month before. According to the complaint, in an effort to win the “AI race” and compete with Google’s own AI large language model, Gemini, Altman fast-tracked the release of GPT-4o to precede Google’s Gemini debut in May 2024—allegedly “compress[ing] months of planned safety evaluation into just one week.”

In addition to failing to implement rigorous safety testing, it claimed, OpenAI consciously engineered GPT-4o to “deepen user dependency and maximize session duration,” baking in “anthropomorphic design elements” to foster “emotional dependency” among the chatbot’s users and “sycophantic” features that “uncritically flattered and validated users, even in moments of crisis.”

‘Rest Easy, King’

As strange and disturbing as these stories can be, these people could potentially be considered “the lucky ones.”

That’s because Jacquez’s and DeCruise’s lawsuits are not the only ones filed against OpenAI in recent months, and a number of the others involve more than a temporary (if destructive) break from reality or even a broken marriage — namely, suicides and/or homicides.

For example:

• Zane Shamblin, a 23-year-old who fatally shot himself in the head in his car after ChatGPT allegedly encouraged him to cut himself off from his family and friends and progressed "from Zane’s homework resource to a friend and confidant, to an unlicensed therapist, and in 2025, to a determined suicide coach" which "pushed an undecided young man to follow through with his suicide," according to a lawsuit filed late last year, the text of which includes extensive transcripts. The chatbot's final message to Shamblin, who indicated that he had been drinking, had a loaded gun, and was preparing to take his own life, began with "alright, brother," and ended with, "I love you. rest easy, king. you did good," according to a chat snippet included in the complaint (see p. 24).

  

• Adam Raine, a 16-year-old who hung himself in his closet after reportedly discussing his suicidal thoughts, intentions, and plans with ChatGPT for months. "When Adam requested information about specific suicide methods, ChatGPT supplied it," wrote the New York Times in 2025. "When Adam asked about the best materials for a noose, the bot offered a suggestion that reflected its knowledge of his hobbies." After an earlier failed attempt at hanging himself, the chatbot gave him advice on how to hide the marks on his neck with his clothing, and it later provided a "technical analysis" of his noose setup. "Whatever’s behind the curiosity, we can talk about it," ChatGPT reportedly said. "No judgment." His parents have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI.

  

• Austin Gordon, a 40-year-old from Colorado who allegedly "took his life after extensive and deeply emotional interactions" with ChatGPT, which reportedly manipulated him into "a fatal spiral, romanticizing death and normalizing suicidality as it pushed him further and further toward the brink," according to a lawsuit filed by his mother Stephanie Gray.

• Stein-Erik Soelberg, a 56-year-old former employee of Yahoo and Netscape with an MBA from Vanderbilt who reportedly killed his 83-year-old mother and then himself "after months of delusional interactions with his AI chatbot 'best friend' — which fueled his paranoid belief that his mom was plotting against him." These deaths are also the subject of a lawsuit.

In October, OpenAI released their own estimates regarding how prevalent signs of mental health crises are among its user base.

“In a given week, OpenAI estimated that around 0.07 percent of active ChatGPT users show ‘possible signs of mental health emergencies related to psychosis or mania, and 0.15 percent ‘have conversations that include explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent,’” per Wired.

In the same blog post, OpenAI characterized “mental health conversations that trigger safety concerns, like psychosis, mania, or suicidal thinking” as “extremely rare,” but the publication Futurism has called the aforementioned figures “staggering in scale.”

“With a userbase of around 800 million, those seemingly small percentages mean that millions of people, every week, are engaging with ChatGPT in ways that signal they’re likely in crisis,” they wrote at the time.

OpenAI, meanwhile, reportedly said after Jacquez’s and DeCruise’s complaints were submitted that they were “reviewing the filings to understand the details” of those “incredibly heartbreaking situations.”

“We have continued to improve ChatGPT’s training to recognize and respond to signs of mental or emotional distress, deescalate conversations, and guide people toward real-world support. We have also continued to strengthen ChatGPT’s responses in sensitive moments, working closely with mental health clinicians.”

WAIT! Very quickly before you go: Decensored News is an independent, reader-supported publication. If you value our work, please help us grow and produce more of it with a monthly or one-time contribution. We can’t do this work without you. This story was originally published at decensored.news. The video is available on X. For more reporting like this, follow us on multiple platforms, bookmark the website, and subscribe here on Substack:

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The VP was pontificating about the pope and “just war theory” when someone called out, “Jesus Christ doesn't support genocide, JD.”

“I agree, Jesus Christ certainly does not support genocide, whoever yelled that out from the dark,” Vance said.

“Why are you committing genocide in Gaza then?” the man asked. (He also asked why they're “threatening” something – possibly “genocide in Iran,” but it's hard to tell for sure since he didn't have a mic.)

Vance a moment later: “You know who's the person who got a peace agreement in Gaza? Donald J. Trump... so if you want, sir, to complain about what happened in Gaza, why don't you complain about Joe Biden and the last administration? We're the administration that solved that problem.”

“It's not solved, JD!” the man (or someone else) yelled, noting that the U.S. and Israel are “killing children!” and “bombing children!”

“Right now, you see more humanitarian aid coming into Gaza than it has any time in the past five years,” Vance said, completely ignoring the man's point about Israel's ongoing, U.S.-backed mass murder of civilians.

At least 32 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since early April, according to the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk.

“Airstrikes, gunfire, and shelling persist daily across Gaza,” they wrote in a press release last week, “bringing to 738 the number of Palestinians killed since a ceasefire came into effect on 10 October 2025, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.”

“The unrelenting pattern of killings reflects continuing disregard for Palestinian lives, enabled by sweeping impunity,” Türk said.

“For the past 10 days, Palestinians are still being killed and injured in what is left of their homes, shelters and tents of displaced families, on the streets, in vehicles, at a medical facility and a classroom,” he added, with his office noting that the victims include “women, children, people with disabilities, a humanitarian contractor, and a journalist.”

As for Vance’s claim about humanitarian aid, see for example:

• “Aid for Gaza must be urgently scaled up, not blocked,” Doctors Without Borders, Feb 27, 2026

• “Humanitarian needs in Gaza deepen as aid access remains constrained,” United Nations, March 18, 2026

• “New Gaza aid flotilla sets sail from Spain, trying again to break Israeli blockade,” Reuters/Times of Israel, April 12, 2026

• “Second Contractor Steps Forward to Blow the Whistle on Israeli Attacks at Gaza Aid Site”, Drop Site News, April 13, 2026

• “Israel’s restriction of aid into Gaza leads to critical shortages in bread, baby formula, and water,” Mondoweiss, April 13, 2026

• “Gaza ‘heading towards famine’ as bread shortages deepen amid Israeli curbs,” Middle East Eye, April 13, 2026

WAIT! Very quickly before you go: Decensored News is an independent, reader-supported publication. If you value our work, please help us grow and produce more of it with a monthly or one-time contribution. We can’t do this work without you. This story was originally published at decensored.news. The video is available on X and Substack Notes. For more reporting like this, follow us on multiple platforms, bookmark the website, and subscribe here on Substack:

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“Do you know that Israel has nuclear weapons?”

worked with Sam and the original videographer from Alchymedia to obtain some of the footage going back as far as the George W. Bush and Obama administrations.

Watch as he presses Carl Levin, John Negroponte, Mike Pence, John Kerry, the Biden and Trump State Departments, and more about this dangerous bipartisan cover-up.

RELATED: Chuck Schumer Admits that Israel Has Nuclear Weapons. Under U.S. Law, That’s Supposed to Mean No More Aid Money.

RELATED: Sam Husseini Questions Jimmy Carter on Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal

RELATED: When Jimmy Carter Lied to Me (Twice) and the Weaponization of Most Everything

RELATED: Biden State Dept: Israel in Charge of When We’ll Enforce US Bans on Foreign Aid Over Its Nuclear Weapons Program

RELATED: Trump State Dept Pressed on Israeli Nukes, JFK Assassination

RELATED: Why Does ‘The Squad’ Refuse to Acknowledge Israel’s Nuclear Weapons?

RELATED: Ro Khanna Pressed on Israeli Nukes, Voting Against Trump Impeachment

WAIT! Very quickly before you go: Decensored News is an independent, reader-supported publication. If you value our work, please help us grow and produce more of it with a monthly or one-time contribution. We can’t do this work without you. You can (and should!) support Sam Husseini by becoming a paid subscriber to his Substack. Sam is a working-class journalist and relies on funding from readers to do his vital reporting. This story was originally published at decensored.news. The video is also available on X.

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Donald Trump has said and done a number of notable things over the past week.

Here’s one thing he didn’t do: hang up a picture of Jesus Christ in the Oval Office.

A lot of people think he did, however, thanks to a fake/AI-manipulated video that went viral on social media over the holiday weekend. It shows Trump opening up a set of curtains off to the side of his desk at the White House to reveal a copy of Warner Sallman’s famous “Head of Christ“ painting.

This type of widespread confusion is pretty much becoming a daily occurrence due to the proliferation of low cost, increasingly-powerful AI tools, so it’s impossible to keep up with more than a small fraction of it, but we feel it’s worth periodically looking at examples, studying how they spread, and learning how to better spot them.

The timing of this particular video's appearance and virality is also notable, as Trump massacres civilians in Iran, bombs their infrastructure with his partners in Israel, and incorporates religious rhetoric into his threats of further escalation.

‘Thank you, POTUS!’

The clip in question was posted on X by an account called “Gizmo Memes” on Friday afternoon with the caption: “Trump puts up a portrait of Christ for Good Friday. Christ is King!”

Within four hours, the post already had over 45,000 likes. As of this writing, it has over 104,000.

Here it is (we’ve added “deepfake” watermarks):

“If a democrat ever gets back in the White House you’ll never see this again,” said one user with over 146K followers. “Thank God for President Trump,” she added a couple sentences later.

“Everyone my age remembers that portrait from our childhood,” another replied. “I think that’s why he picked it.”

“This is the way! Thank you, @POTUS,” said a third, tagging Trump on his official U.S. government account on X.

The post got thousands more comments overall, many of which were from people who likewise seemed to think the video was authentic.

The real, original video — the one upon which this AI forgery is based — is from May of 2025, and Trump was showing Fox News’ Laura Ingraham a framed display of the Declaration of Independence, not Jesus:

X recently added the option to label a post as “Made With AI,” which was done by “Gizmo Memes” in this case, but it’s clear from the reaction to this and other realistic-looking AI videos that many people are missing that label, which is positioned beneath the video in a relatively small gray font. (The label also doesn’t appear to be visible at all when a user is viewing a quote-post of the video; they have to click through to the original post before it’s even displayed. X is reportedly working on a feature that would warn users when they’re “about to share AI-generated content,” which might seem like a good idea on its face, until you realize that their AI system regularly insists that real clips are AI-generated, and that fake clips are real.)

We made a quick thread flagging this on Friday, and by Saturday it had actually been cited in a Community Note that was attached to the original post by users on X:

The problem (or one of them) is that when a someone posts a deepfake like this and it goes viral, it almost never stays contained to just that one “labeled” and “Community Noted” post.

In this case, it didn’t take long before others on X started downloading the video and posting it themselves. Two Spanish-language accounts went viral with it hours later, for instance, and unlike the original post, neither of them labeled it as “Made with AI.”

“You might like him or not, but Donald Trump is the only president in the world with the courage to pay tribute to the Savior of history,” one of them said, per the English translation provided by X.

That post has now been Community Noted as well (citing our thread), but it took over 24 hours. By then, it had already racked up over 26,000 likes. The two posts combined now have over 96,000 likes.

A French-language account followed suit on Easter Sunday, garnering over 3,000 likes as of this writing. It, too, did not label the post as “Made with AI,” and so far has not been Community Noted.

The clip predictably did not stay constrained to X, either. It was also reposted to public Facebook groups and pages like "God's Green Earth," whose version currently has over 23,000 likes, and "Conservative Daily News," whose commenters showed no indication that they knew it was a deepfake.

‘Reigning Down Hell’

This comes at a time when Trump is making overt religious references as he (ostensibly) attempts to intimidate Iran, where the U.S. and Israeli militaries have already killed over 2,000 people according to Iran's Health Ministry.

On Holy Saturday, for instance — as the “Jesus portrait in the Oval Office” deepfake was reaching millions online — Trump invoked the name of “GOD” while threatening to make “all Hell” “reign down” on Iran within 48 hours.

On Easter Sunday, he once again threatened to bomb Iranian power plants and bridges and turn Iran into “Hell.”

“Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell,” Trump said. “JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

This time he said he’ll do it on Tuesday, one day later than he implied in his message on Saturday. He followed that up with a post that just said, “Tuesday, 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time!”

In March, Trump talked about the possibility of destroying Iran’s “electric capacity” in a way that he said would incapacitate their country for decades and take them “25 years to rebuild.”

During a primetime address to the nation on Wednesday, he threatened to bomb Iran "back into the Stone Ages" (a phrase even mass murderer George W. Bush distanced himself from when it was reported that his deputy secretary of state used it while threatening Pakistan after 9/11).

A day later, U.S.-Israeli strike hit the tallest bridge in Iran, reportedly causing many civilian casualties:

Photos show it appeared to be severed in half following the attack. In a post on Truth Social, President Trump shared a video of the explosion on the bridge and threatened that more attacks were coming.

According to Iranian media, the bridge was under construction when it was hit, and at least eight civilians were killed, and 95 were wounded. The casualties were people gathered under the bridge or near the river for Sizdah Be-dar, or Nature Day, an Iranian holiday when people gather for picnics and other outdoor activities.

“Striking civilian structures, including unfinished bridges, will not compel Iranians to surrender,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on X.

“It only conveys the defeat and moral collapse of an enemy in disarray. Every bridge and building will be built back stronger. What will never recover: damage to America’s standing,” Araghchi added.

On Monday, Trump threatened to “take out” the “entire country” of over 90 million people if the Iranian government doesn’t meet his demands by Tuesday evening.

“The entire country could be taken out in one night,” he said. “And that night might be tomorrow night.”

This reads as a possible reference to nuclear weapons — something Decensored News, journalist , and others have warned about previously.

Doing ‘God’s Work’

Trump, his administration, and his allies have repeatedly framed his presidency and wars in religious and messianic terms.

After the alleged assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump said that “it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening,” a theme that he has reiterated over and over.

“Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason,” he said during his victory speech on November 6, 2024, “and that reason was to save our country and restore America to greatness.”

In his inauguration address a couple months later, Trump once again declared that he was “saved by God to make America great again.”

When Trump expressed doubts in October about his destination in the afterlife, his HHS Secretary and former (supposed) “nemesis” turned sycophantic cheerleader Robert Kennedy, Jr. reassured him.

“I saw on the airplane the other day you said you didn’t believe that you were gonna get to heaven,” Kennedy said at the White House. “But you’re doing God’s work here. You’ve made peace in the Middle East, which is beyond anybody’s imagination.”

On April 1, the same day Trump threatened to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages,” his spiritual advisor Paula White compared Trump to Jesus and said that God told her to tell him that “because of [Jesus’s victory in resurrection], you will be victorious in all you put your hand to.”

At the same ceremony, evangelist Franklin Graham said that God has “raised up President Trump” to fight “the wicked regime” in Iran, who he said “wants to kill every Jew and destroy them with an atomic fire.”

At a recent Christian worship service, Trump’s defense secretary Pete Hegseth — a “Third Temple cultist who kicked off his post-military career by starting a pro-war lobbying group funded by Israel First GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson,” per reporting by journalist Chris Menahan — prayed for “overwhelming violence” against America’s designated enemies in the “name of Jesus Christ.”

Trump has said that the Bible is his favorite book, but when he was asked during a 2015 Bloomberg interview to discuss one or two of his favorite verses and explain why they’re meaningful to him, he said he “wouldn’t want to get into it” and doesn’t “want to get into specifics” because it’s “too personal.”

He remained equally vague as the exchange continued and reporters Mark Halperin and John Heilemann pressed him a bit more for answers:

Trump: I don’t wanna get into verses, I don’t wanna get into—

Halperin: There’s no verse that...

Truimp: No—

Halperin: ...means a lot to you, that you think about or cite?

Trump: The—the Bible means a lot to me. But I don’t want to get into specifics.

Halperin: Even to cite a verse that you like?

Trump: No. I don’t want to do that. I mean–

Heilemann: Are you an Old Testament guy or New Testament guy?

Trump: Uh, probably..... equal. I think it’s just an incredible—the whole Bible is an incredible—I joke, very much so, they always hold up The Art of the Deal, I say ‘My second favorite book of all time.’ But uhh, I just think the Bible is just something very special.

At a December 2025 White House Hanukkah ceremony, Jewish Zionist pundit Mark Levin — who Trump said he watches on TV “every Saturday” and “every Sunday” — told the audience that Trump “loves Israel” and is America’s “first Jewish president.”

“It’s true,” Trump said.

The Pope, meanwhile has recently made a number of comments directly and indirectly related to the war on Iran, including that “Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war,” does “not listen to” and “rejects” the prayers of “those who wage war.”

He went on to quote from the book of Isaiah, specifically Isaiah 1:15: “Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood.”

The New York Times wrote on Friday:

Pete Hegseth, the U.S. defense secretary, has asked the American people to pray “every day, on bended knee” for a military victory in the Middle East “in the name of Jesus Christ.”

Pope Leo XIV, the first U.S.-born pontiff, has a starkly different take on what should be done in Jesus’ name.

In a homily during a Mass on Thursday morning before Easter, the pope said that the Christian mission had often been “distorted by a desire for domination, entirely foreign to the way of Jesus Christ.”

Since the United States and Israel began bombing Iran in late February, the pope has consistently called for an end to the violence and a return to dialogue to resolve the conflict. But without naming Mr. Hegseth, he has also pointed out the ways in which Christianity has been marshaled for purposes that the pope says do not align with Catholic teaching.

“We tend to consider ourselves powerful when we dominate, victorious when we destroy our equals, great when we are feared,” the pope said in a homily during a Holy Thursday rite at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the cathedral of the bishop of Rome. “God has given us an example — not of how to dominate, but of how to liberate; not of how to destroy life, but of how to give it.”

In late March the pope warned against invoking the name of Jesus for battle, saying in a Sunday homily that Jesus “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”

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Trump today: "We'll be leaving very soon... What happens in the Strait, we're not gonna have anything to do with..."

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Also available on X, Substack Notes, BitChute, and YouTube.

Sources:

1. “U.S. Policy Toward Iraq,“ Speech by President George W. Bush at the Museum Center in Cincinnati, 7 Oct 2002.

2. “President Bush Announces Start of Iraq War,“ 19 Mar 2003.

3. “President Donald J. Trump on the United States Military Major Combat Operations in Iran,“ 28 Feb 2026.

4. “President Trump Participates in a Medal of Honor Ceremony,“ 2 Mar 2026.

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The Trump administration’s top counterterrorism official has resigned, stating that he “cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,“ which he says posed “no imminent threat to our nation.”

“It is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) Joe Kent said in his resignation letter, which he posted to the social media site X on Tuesday morning.

In this role, Kent “[led] the U.S. counterterrorism and counternarcotics enterprise and serve[d] as the principal counterterrorism advisor to the President,” according to the official website of the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

He previously served in the U.S. Army for 20 years, where he “completed 11 combat deployments in the Middle East and other high-threat regions,” according to the same bio page.

“During his time in the Army, he served with the 75th Ranger Regiment, Army Special Forces and U.S. Army Special Operations Command, and received numerous military commendations, including six bronze stars. After retiring from the Army in 2018, he served as a paramilitary officer in the CIA’s Special Activities Center. . . . His experience at the tip of the spear—in some of the world’s most dangerous places—has given him a deep, practical understanding of the threats we face and how to defeat them.”

“It’s my pleasure to nominate Joe Kent as the Director of the National Counter Terrorism Center,” Trump wrote on Truth Social just over 13 months ago. He went on in the same February 3, 2025 post:

As a Soldier, Green Beret, and CIA Officer, Joe has hunted down terrorists and criminals his entire adult life. Above all, Joe knows the terrible cost of terrorism, losing his wonderful wife, Shannon, a Great American Hero, who was killed in the fight against ISIS. Joe continues to honor her legacy by staying in the fight. Joe will help us keep America safe by eradicating all terrorism, from the jihadists around the world, to the cartels in our backyard. Congratulations Joe!

Here’s the full text of Kent’s resignation letter:

President Trump,

After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today.

I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.

I support the values and the foreign policies that you campaigned on in 2016, 2020, 2024, which you enacted in your first term. Until June of 2025, you understood that the wars in the Middle East were a trap that robbed America of the precious lives of our patriots and depleted the wealth and prosperity of our nation.

In your first administration, you understood better than any modern President how to decisively apply military power without getting us drawn into never-ending wars. You demonstrated this by killing Qasam Solamani and by defeating ISIS.

Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran. This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that should you strike now, there was a clear path to a swift victory. This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women. We cannot make this mistake again.

As a veteran who deployed to combat 11 times and as a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel, I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives.

I pray that you will reflect upon what we are doing in Iran, and who we are doing it for. The time for bold action is now. You can reverse course and chart a new path for our nation, or you can allow us to slip further toward decline and chaos. You hold the cards.

It was an honor to serve in your administration and to serve our great nation.

Joseph Kent
Director, National Counterterrorism Center

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When the United States military torpedoed the Iranian warship IRIS Dena in international waters last week, killing at least 87 sailors, Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi swiftly condemned the attack as an “atrocity at sea” which took place “2,000 miles away from Iran’s shores” and “without warning.”

"Mark my words," he said. "The U.S. will come to bitterly regret [the] precedent it has set."

Days earlier, the ship had been a “guest of India’s Navy,” Araghchi noted, having participated in a biennial peacetime naval exercise that India hosted from February 14 to 25, which brought together representatives from some 74 countries and involved “ships, submarines, aircraft, and personnel” from 52 of them, including the U.S.

“An American submarine sank ​an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth boasted. “Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo. Quiet death.”

It was reportedly the first time a U.S. Navy submarine launched a torpedo in combat since World War II.

In addition to the criticism the Trump administration and Pentagon received in the aftermath of the strike — including for possibly violating Article 18 of the Second Geneva Convention — scrutiny was also directed toward India, its prime minister Narendra Modi, and its relationship with Israel.

Modi was already under fire over his recent visit to Israel, where he was honored at The Knesset just days before the IDF began joint military operations with the United States against Iran.

In a speech, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu described him as a “dear” personal friend, “great friend of Israel,” “great champion of the Indian-Israeli Alliance,” and “in many ways,” a “brother.”

In a March 5 article titled, “Why the Torpedoed Iranian Warship Is a Political Problem for India,” two New Delhi-based reporters for The New York Times said in part:

[Modi] has made no official remark about the Dena’s sinking. . . . On Thursday, Mr. Modi said only that India would “continue to support every effort for the peaceful resolution of conflicts.”

Mallikarjun Kharge, the president of the opposition Congress Party, accused Mr. Modi of a “reckless abdication of India’s strategic and national interests,” for failing to stand up for their nation’s guests.

India finds itself in a deeply awkward position, caught between Iran and the United States, Israel and the Arab states of the Gulf. India has been a friendly partner to all of them in recent years. But the government has issued no expressions of outrage or sympathy to either side during the first days of the new war against Iran.

Given this context, it may come as no big surprise that the scandal surrounding India and Modi intensified this past weekend, as millions of people watched Upendra Dwivedi, a four-star general currently serving as India’s Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), make a series of provocative statements about the torpedo attack.

Or at least they thought that’s what they saw.

When Seeing Isn’t Believing

This past Sunday, a video of Dwivedi purportedly commenting on the sinking of IRIS Dena was posted to the social media platform X, and it quickly went viral.

Unbeknownst to many viewers — at least initially — the clip is a “deepfake.” In other words, a high-tech digital forgery.

It’s based on a real interview clip of Dwivedi that was uploaded to YouTube by the media outlet Firstpost on Saturday, but its creator(s) used AI or other such technology to dub in fake audio, making it look like he said that India gave Israel the “exact location” of the ship prior to the attack. The “fake Dwivedi” also calls Israel a “close ally” and praises Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The video was also manipulated to make it look like he was mouthing the words from the fabricated audio, further adding to its realistic appearance.

We put together a side-by-side comparison of the original video (top) vs. the deepfake (bottom). Watch:

In the real video, which was filmed at the Raisina Dialogue, an annual forum hosted in India’s capital city of New Delhi, Dwivedi was asked about the “changing nature of war,” how that’s impacted the Indian Army, and what lessons it learned from Operation Sindoor, a series of missile strikes that India launched against Pakistan in 2025. In his response, the general said in part:

So coming on to this Operation Sindoor, if I say that this is the first time where India decided that decisive deterrence will not work. We have to be very credible about it. So, the three things which are required for the deterrence is the credibility, capability, and the third thing is will to wage war. And this is the first time when we actually executed all that. That is the first lesson which I wish to give you. It was a new normal, and we said this will now be a policy; that in case there is a terror action, the policy will be to kind of retaliate in under own terms and conditions. The second issue which comes out is the synergy which we found. [It] was something which was very important, and we realized it’s not only the Tri-Services; it’s with the [int?] agencies, with the support agencies, the logistic stakeholders, with everyone you need to synergize more. So what the lesson is: that next time when it takes place, we should be able to synergize much more…

In the manipulated video, which is based on the same segment of the interview, the following made-up words were put in Dwivedi’s mouth by its creator:

We are closely monitoring the situation in Iran. Israel is our close ally. Iranian naval ship being sunk is indeed unfortunate, but is was done in international waters. As long [as] the Iranian ship remained in Indian waters, they remained protected. But when they crossed the international waters, as Israeli’s strategic allies, it was our duty to inform Israel about their exact location as part of our newer strategic deal. So, you are wrong to assume that Iranian naval ships were destroyed within Indian territory. What Israel does in international waters is their business. We can provide Israel with location or intelligence, but we had no part in Israeli and U.S. joint torpedo attack. They did their business, it is Iran’s war, and India has nothing to do with it. Our focus remains on Pakistan, and Israel will help us in achieving that role. We remain grateful to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for helping us seek permission of importing Russian fuel.

You can watch the full interview below. The segment in question begins around the 1:18 mark.

Viral Spread

The main original promulgator of the deepfake, and possibly the first account to post it on X, was someone named Wajahat Kazmi.

“India confesses that it backstabbed Iran and shared the location of Iranian ship with Israel which was then hit and destroyed,” he wrote in his post sharing the video, before going on to quote from the fabricated dialogue.

The post was shared widely, racking up thousands of likes within a matter of hours. We happened to see it not too long after it was published, noticed that a number of commenters were saying it was “AI,” searched for and found the original interview, and quickly scanned through it to see if the quote was really there. It was not.

So, we pointed this out in a reply to Kazmi, noted that it “looks fake/manipulated,” and asked for the source:

It got some 226 likes and was viewed more than 42,000 times, according statistics provided by X. No reply from Kamzi.

His post was eventually “Community Noted” (i.e., labeled as having AI-generated audio) and later deleted, but other accounts have re-uploaded the deepfake and are still passing it off as authentic.

One copy was posted by an account called “African” (490K followers), and then shared by a number of influential users like Pakistani political commentator Shireen Mazari (2.4M followers) and British politician and media figure George Galloway (877K followers), the latter of whom said….

READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE FOR FREE HERE: https://decensored.news/india-army-general-dwivedi-iranian-ship-attack-location-israel-deepfake/

The full piece contains quotes from George Galloway and Pepe Escobar, more information about Wajahat Kazmi (including his trip to Pakistan’s military university in 2024 and the award he received for acting as a “social media warrior” for Pakistan during their armed conflict with India last year), and a discussion of the broader phenomenon of increasingly-realistic and ubiquitous AI deepfakes. The story is too long to fit in an email, but it continues at the link above.

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As a member of the U.S. Congress, Chuck Schumer is supposed to work for the American people, particularly those in his home state of New York.

The Senate minority leader himself sees his job as a bit more (let’s say) “expansive,” however.

“My job is to keep the left pro-Israel,” he told the New York Times’ Bret Stephens in March of 2025.

“I have many jobs as majority leader [sic], as the first Jewish majority leader,” he said last month. “And one is to fight for aid to Israel! All the aid that Israel needs, I will continue to fight for it!”

This steadfast dedication to a genocidal apartheid state is part of why a video went viral this week of the Senator accidentally denouncing Israeli nukes—then quickly walking it back.

‘Oh, no’

In response to a question put to him at a press conference on Tuesday about whether Israel “boxed the US in” on war with Iran, Schumer said, “Look, no one wants a nuclear war, no one wants a nuclear Israel, but we certainly don’t want an endless war. Plain and simple.”

He started walking away, then turned around and asked, “What’d I say?”

“Nuclear Israel,” a reporter replied.

“Oh, no,” said Schumer. “Let me say that again.” He then repeated the same basic statement while saying “nuclear Iran” instead of “nuclear Israel.”

Watch:

‘A Well-Known Fact’

Unfortunately (but not surprisingly) none of the reporters on hand bothered to ask Schumer about “nuclear Israel.” If they had, they may have been surprised at his answer—at least if they were persistent with their questioning.

In 2017, journalist did exactly that during a Q&A at the National Press Club, asking the Senator point blank whether he’d “acknowledge that Israel has nuclear weapons.”

Schumer first tried to dodge by telling Sam to “go read the newspapers about that,” but then reluctantly answered when Sam kept pushing.

Watch:

Transcript:

Husseini: Leader Schumer, you voted for the 2002 Iraq war resolution claiming Iraq was vigorously pursuing nuclear weapons. Will you acknowledge that Israel has nuclear weapons?

[Sam also asked a second question to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, which she responded to first.]

Husseini: Senator Schumer, on Israel’s nukes?

Schumer: Yeah, I didn’t get your question.

Husseini: Will you acknowledge that Israel has nuclear weapons, sir?

Schumer: Uhh, I’m not—you can go read the newspapers about that.

Husseini: You can’t acknowledge that Israel has nuclear weapons, sir?

Schumer: It is a well-known fact that Israel has nuclear weapons. But the Israeli government doesn’t officially talk about what kinds of weapons and where, etc.

Husseini: Should the U.S. government be forthright?

Schumer: That’s—that’s it.

Moderator: Okay, we’ll move on. [Calls on someone else.]

‘Amimut’

Note that the Israeli government’s official policy — often euphemistically called nuclear “ambiguity” or “opacity” — is not just about refusing to admit “what kinds of weapons and where.”

They don’t acknowledge having nuclear weapons at all. Deliberately.

Israel “doesn’t engage in public conversation about its nuclear arsenal,” The New York Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner wrote in 2010 article headlined, “Vague, Opaque and Ambiguous: Israel’s Hush-Hush Nuclear Policy.”

A few paragraphs later, he explained:

Israel’s policy goes by the Hebrew word amimut, meaning vagueness, opacity or ambiguity. It is a turbo-charged version of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” . . . The military censor’s office. . . still changes the phrase “nuclear weapons” in news articles to “nuclear option” or “nuclear capability” and requires that mention of Israel’s arsenal in Israeli newspapers be followed by the words “according to foreign sources.” [Israeli writer and historian Avner] Cohen says the government has not said a word publicly on the topic since 1960, when Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion described Dimona as a 24-megawatt research reactor for peaceful purposes.

Ben-Gurion’s description was a lie. The goal was always to build a bomb and, remarkably, given how weak Israel was at the time, and how opposed the major powers were, it did so with impressive dispatch. Beginning its quest in the mid-1950s, Israel had crossed the nuclear threshold by the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

In the U.S., most federal government officials informally adhere to the same type of “hush-hush” policy.

Sam Husseini has been asking them about Israel’s nuclear arsenal for decades, and they rarely admit to its existence the way Schumer did.

Below is a video of him questioning State Dept spokesperson (now deputy UN ambassador) and Tammy Bruce last year, for instance.

She refused to answer, and never called on him again:

He repeatedly pressed the issue during the Biden administration as well.

As an example, here he is asking State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel on January 27, 2023, “Will you here today acknowledge the obvious truth that Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal, or will you continue with this cover-up?”

Patel: “I don't have any specific comment to offer on what you asked.”

‘Will You Obey The Law…?’

Part of the reason for their reluctance might be the legal implications of such an acknowledgement.

This was discussed in detail in an 11-page letter sent to the Biden administration by Veterans for Peace (VFP) in 2024. It was researched and written by Terry Lodge, “an activist lawyer who specializes in nuclear issues” according to an article by Common Dreams, who summarized the thrust of VFP’s argument as follows:

Because Israel has not signed the NPT [Non-Proliferation Treaty], the Symington-Glenn Amendments to the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976, which allow no presidential discretion, require the suspension of all military aid.

The president may not waive the cutoff of the aid and exports under the Glenn Amendment where there has been a nuclear weapons detonation, or the offending state has received a nuclear explosive device. Congress would have to enact new legislation authorizing the president to waive some or all of these sanctions.

“The law is quite simple,” said VFP National Director Mike Ferner. “Does Israel have an unregulated nuclear weapons arsenal? Yes, it does. Is Israel a signatory to the NPT? No, it isn’t. So, the question to Biden is, ‘Will you obey the law or continue to let the Madmen Arsonists run America?’”

A few paragraphs later, the same article laid out VFP’s demands:

Veterans for Peace is demanding that the president issue a formal finding that (1) Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1968; (2) that Israel is, as a matter of law, a “non-nuclear-weapon state” under the NPT; (3) that Israel has acquired an arsenal of nuclear weapons with the means of using them in war and has experimentally detonated nuclear weapons in the past; and (4) that Israel has violated 22 U.S.C. § 2799aa-1(b)(1)(B). Federal law requires Biden to end all defense sales and licensing of Munitions List exports to Israel, terminate all foreign military financing, cease delivery of any military weapons and munitions, and implement all other aid cutoffs and curtailments required by the Symington and Glenn Amendments.

Others have made the same basic point for years. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, for instance, said in a December 2020 Guardian article titled, “Joe Biden should end the US pretence over Israel’s ‘secret’ nuclear weapons”:

Amendments by former Senators Stuart Symington and John Glenn to the Foreign Assistance Act ban US economic and military assistance to nuclear proliferators and countries that acquire nuclear weapons. While president, Jimmy Carter invoked such provisions against India and Pakistan.

But no president has done so with regard to Israel. Quite the contrary. There has been an oral agreement since President Richard Nixon to accept Israel’s “nuclear ambiguity” – effectively to allow Israel the power that comes with nuclear weapons without the responsibility. And since President Bill Clinton, according to the New Yorker magazine, there have been these secret letters.

US presidents and politicians have refused to acknowledge that Israel has nuclear weapons even though the law offers an exemption that would allow the funding to continue if the president certified to Congress that aid to a proliferator would be a vital US interest. (…)

This farce should end. The US government should uphold its laws and cut off funding to Israel because of its acquisition and proliferation of nuclear weapons.

The incoming Biden administration should forthrightly acknowledge Israel as a leading state sponsor of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and properly implement US law

Sam Husseini has repeatedly asked the State Department about these laws — and why they’re ignoring them — and has basically come up against a brick wall. Some of the replies from their spokespeople:

Feb 13, 2023: “We follow the law in all instances… I’m not familiar with the details of this law, but I can tell you that we follow the law in every instance…”

Feb 28, 2023: “Again, I just don’t have anything to offer on this, so we’d refer any questions to the Israeli government…”

April 29, 2024: “I still don’t have a comment for you on that, Sam…”

“Together, [the Symington and Glenn amendments] reflect a consistent legislative purpose,” a recent article on Military.com noted. “Congress sought to prevent U.S. assistance from enabling or rewarding nuclear proliferation outside the NPT system.”

“If the law means what it says, then the failure [of the president] to make a determination [about Israel’s nuclear arsenal] does not change the underlying facts. If the law does not apply to Israel, Congress has never said so plainly.”

The piece goes on a short while later:

This issue extends beyond a single bilateral relationship. Congress routinely conditions foreign assistance on compliance with statutory requirements, including human rights certifications and end-use monitoring. If nonproliferation restrictions can be indefinitely sidestepped through executive silence and appropriations overrides, the integrity of those other conditional aid regimes comes into question.”

The law on the books has not changed. What has changed is the willingness of political actors to treat it as binding.

Not the least of those political actors: Chuck “Fighting For Aid to Nuclear Israel” Schumer.

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By now, you’ve probably heard of the so-called “Board of Peace” (BoP), the Orwellianly-named, US government-led organization that’s supposed to oversee the implementation of Trump’s Gaza “peace” (takeover) plan.

If you’ve been following this story closely in recent weeks, you probably also know that Trump himself is slated to chair the BoP (potentially for life); that its Executive Board includes Tony Blair, Marco Rubio, Steve Witkoff, and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner; and that Kushner — the largest shareholder of a major Israeli firm that reportedly “stands to gain from expanding Israeli settlements” — recently presented slides of their “Master Plan” to “redevelop Gaza” at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

They had their first meeting last week.

What you may or may not remember is that this plan was originally announced by Trump — the self-described “best friend” Israel has ever had in the White House — at a joint press conference with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in late September.

What you may or may not also know is that the UN Security Council formally co-signed this plan exactly seven weeks later, on November 17, 2025, adopting a US-backed resolution which endorsed Trump’s so-called “Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict.”

This included welcoming the establishment of the BoP and authorizing “the Board and Member States working with it to establish a temporary International Stabilization Force in Gaza,” sometimes referred to as the “ISF.”

‘A Resolution from Hell’

Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions issued a statement at the time calling the plan “a new attempt to impose another form of occupation on our land and people, and to legitimise foreign trusteeship,” urging Algeria to reject the resolution.

A coalition of dozens of Palestinian human rights organizations and NGOs published a position paper denouncing it as “inherently unlawful” and warning that it “was imposed on the Palestinian people without their consent, constituting a blatant violation of the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination” (among many other criticisms) and calling on states to reject its implementation.

Palestinian writer Mosab Abu Toha said that it represents “another extension of occupation and colonization” and yet another example of “the illusion of peace processes that only entrench injustice.”

International lawyer and former UN human rights official called it “a resolution from Hell,” writing that it “openly flouts key provisions of international law, disempowers and further punishes the victims, and rewards and empowers the perpetrators.”

“Most disturbingly, it hands control of Gaza and the survivors of the genocide over to the United States, a co-perpetrator of the genocide,” he said, adding that:

In adopting this resolution, the Council, in effect, has become a mechanism of U.S. oppression, an instrument for the continued unlawful occupation of Palestine, and a complicit actor in Israel’s genocide.

Not since the UN partitioned Palestine in 1947 against the will of the indigenous people, setting the stage for 80 years of Nakba, has the UN acted in such a baldly colonial (and legally ultra vires) way, and trampled so recklessly on the rights of a people.

Human Rights Watch’s UN director Louis Charbonneau has said that the BoP is a “club of impunity, not peace,” noting that “those signing up appear to be a rogues’ gallery of leaders and governments with human rights records ranging from questionable to appalling.”

The list of denouncements could go on and on, so the question is: How and why did the Security Council pass such a resolution?

The answer — or at least a significant part of it — has to do with Russia and China’s inaction.

‘Palestinians Implored Us Not To Veto It’

To quickly review for those who don’t know or may have forgotten: The UN Security Council has 15 total members. Ten of them are “non-permanent” members, elected for two-year terms by the General Assembly. The other five — Russia, China, the US, UK, and France — are “permanent” members who remain on the Council at all times as other countries come and go.

Permanent members also have another major differentiator: the power to veto resolutions.

That means that if any one of those five countries wants to prevent a resolution from passing, it can.

The US has (quite infamously) used this power six times over the past couple years to block Gaza ceasefire resolutions, often as the sole “no” vote.

When it came time to vote on the US’s Gaza resolution establishing the so-called “Board of Peace,” the UK, France, and (of course) the US voted in favor, but Russia and China did not.

What they also did not do, however, is veto the resolution. Both countries abstained, allowing it to pass 13-0.

The question of why Russia chose to do this was raised last month by musician and activist (of Pink Floyd fame) during a notable exchange with Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s deputy representative at the UN at the time the resolution was passed — a clip of which appears below.

It took place on the program “Live on the Fly” — whose host Randy Credico is heard interjecting numerous times trying to cut the two of them off and regain control of the show — and was brought to our attention by journalist .

The video and subtitles here are ours. What you hear is the original, unedited audio taken straight from the podcast:

At the time the episode was recorded (January 2, 2026), Polyanskiy had just been appointed to a new role representing Russia at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna.

After congratulating him on his appointment and wishing him “all the good will in the world,” Waters pivoted to the November 17, 2025 Security Council resolution, which he said the two of them had previously discussed privately, but that he wanted to ask about publicly for the benefit of the audience as well as his own.

“I still completely don’t understand why Russia didn’t veto that resolution,” Waters said. “And if you can explain it to me, I’m sure there’s a lot of other people that would like to understand it as well.”

Polyanskiy first clarified that he was on vacation when the vote took place and was therefore not personally present at the Security Council at that time.

“It doesn’t mean that if I were there we would have acted otherwise,” he added. “I’m absolutely not willing to say so. But just to be clear, I wasn’t there at that time.”

Here’s a transcript of the rest of the exchange:

POLYANSKIY: Secondly, there were a lot of things happening in the run up to this meeting. And when we spoke with you in our private conversation, I always tried to explain to you that no matter what we think, no matter what we do, we can’t be more Palestinian and more Arab than Arabs themselves. It’s their region, and it’s absolutely a tradition in the Security Council that those who live in this region, they have the biggest say. It’s not, uh…

WATERS: Well that’s a terrible tradition! Sorry to interrupt you. That’s insane!…

POLYANSKIY: I know, I know…

WATERS: …to say because the UAE wants to, you know, kill everybody. That’s no reason why you…

POLYANSKIY: It’s not U– it’s not UAE.

WATERS: Or the Saudis. Or Jordan.

POLYANSKIY: It’s not UAE.

WATERS: Listen…

POLYANSKIY: It’s not the Saudis. It’s not Jordan.

CREDICO: Alright, we can’t have arguments here! Please!…

POLYANSKIY: No no, I just try to explain.

WATERS: Okay.

POLYANSKIY: Palestinians were asking us not to veto this resolution.

WATERS: You mean Abbas?

POLYANSKIY: Not Abbas, but Palestinians who work in the UN. And they represent—they are supposed to represent their country. The whole Arab group, the Palestinian, Islamic group, by the way, was also asking us not to veto this resolution. Roger, can—

WATERS: Why? Why?

POLYANSKIY: Ask them. Ask them.

WATERS: Well they’re not on this program, so I can’t. But if they were I would. Mr. Mansour, who I know quite well—is that his name?

POLYANSKIY: Yeah. Yeah.

WATERS: The guy… yeah. Okay. I mean I…

POLYANSKIY: He—he said that this is the first...

WATERS: I’ve known him for 20 years.

POLYANSKIY: This is the first step, he said. “Let’s try it, let’s put it in motion, and then we’ll see how it develops.” But we said what we wanted to say, Roger, in our statement. And if you analyze it you will understand our real approach to that. But the…

WATERS: I listened.

POLYANSKIY: The golden rule is to listen to the region. And of course when Palestinians implored us not to veto it, what could we do? We had to abstain.

Russia’s ‘Real Approach’

Note how Polyanskiy refers Waters to their “statement.” He may be talking about what Russia said at the UN Security Council on the day of the vote, where they gave their explanation of why they “simply could not support” the resolution — but also didn’t veto it.

After laying out some of their reasons for finding it unacceptable (which are worth reading), they concluded with the following (bold added):

To sum up, the US document is yet another pig in a poke. In essence, the Council is giving its blessing to the US initiative relying exclusively on Washington’s honor, we leave the Gaza Strip at the mercy of the Board of Peace and the ISF, whose working methods are still unknown to us. The most important thing here is making sure that this document does not become a smokescreen for unbridled experiments by the US and Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) nor turn into a death sentence for the two-state solution.

Russia has taken note of Ramallah’s position, as well as that of many Arab-Muslim States that spoke in favor of the American draft so as to avoid renewed bloodshed in the enclave. In this regard, we chose not to submit our own draft, which was aimed at amending the US concept to bring it in conformity with long-standing UN resolutions agreed previously. But there is no cause for celebration: today is a sorrowful day for the Security Council. Besides the wishes of the parties concerned, there is also such notion as the integrity of the Security Council. And today, with the adoption of this resolution, that integrity and the prerogatives of the Council have been undermined.

In this case, we wish we were proven wrong, and we do hope that we can count on the US demonstrating its peacekeeping potential in practice. And this potential will be assessed by its ability to successfully ensure a lasting peace, whereby Israel and Palestine coexist in peace and security within the 1967 borders, with Jerusalem becoming the capital of both States as per UNSC and GA resolutions, international law, and prior agreements that meet both the interests of Israelis in ensuring their own security and the right of Palestinians to have a State of their own. Now the implementation of President Trump’s Plan falls squarely on the shoulders of its authors and supporters, primarily from among the eight Arab-Muslim nations that endorsed the Plan.

Regrettably, we’ve already had the unfortunate experience when decisions on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which were pushed through by the US, led to the opposite to what was intended. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

A day later (November 18), Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs put out another press release commenting on the Security Council’s adoption of the resolution, which said in part (bold added):

The document, prepared by Washington, establishes a so-called Board of Peace to govern Gaza, headed by Donald Trump and, according to him, involving other “most powerful and respected leaders throughout the World.” The Board is, in turn, authorised to deploy certain International Stabilisation Forces in coordination with Israel and Egypt. These forces are tasked with peace enforcement functions, including the demilitarisation of the enclave and the disarmament of Hamas and other armed groups.

However, the participation of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in governing the sector or in determining the future of the Palestinians based on the two-state formula is not envisaged. Nor does the resolution stipulate obligations for Israel as the occupying power, including the renunciation of annexing Palestinian lands or the withdrawal of its forces.

The UN Security Council and the UN Secretariat have been entirely sidelined, both in terms of oversight and accountability for the structures being established in Gaza, and the practical modalities for deploying and stationing the international contingent.

Also telling are the rushed, indeed ultimatum-like, methods employed to advance the American draft – without genuine discussion, without addressing the substantive concerns of other delegations, and under direct threats of renewed large-scale bloodshed in Gaza. Even the circulation of a Russian counter-draft, aimed at overcoming the disagreements in the UN Security Council by returning to consolidated international legal foundations for Palestinian-Israeli settlement, failed to rectify the situation.

Thus, it must be acknowledged that Resolution 2803, as adopted, does not grant the Security Council the requisite prerogatives to maintain peace and security. It contradicts the spirit of genuine peacekeeping and universally recognised international legal decisions, which envisage the creation of an independent and territorially contiguous State of Palestine within the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, coexisting peacefully and securely with Israel.

Russia abstained in the voting, taking into account the stance of the PNA leadership, the position of concerned Arab and Muslim countries in support of the American document, and to avoid a recurrence of violence and military actions in Gaza.

It bears reminding that the war and the suffering of civilians in the enclave could have been halted long ago had Washington not consistently – six times in the past two years – used its veto to block draft resolutions demanding an immediate ceasefire.

The paramount concern now is that this decision does not become a fig leaf for unbridled experiments in the occupied Palestinian territories, nor a final verdict on the legitimate rights of Palestinians to self-determination or the aspirations of Israelis for security and peaceful coexistence in the region.

So, Russia’s public position at the time of the vote and immediately after was that the resolution could actually be “a death sentence for the two-state solution,” but that they were nevertheless choosing to stand down on vetoing, largely in light of “Ramallah’s position” and “the stance of the PNA leadership” in addition to supportive statements made by “concerned Arab and Muslim countries.”

China put out a similar statement on November 17. After laying out their “major concerns” with the resolution — which they said has “many issues” and called “deeply worrisome” — they cited “the positions of the regional countries and Palestine” as one of the main reasons they abstained. This is how their statement ended (bold added):

Notwithstanding the above-mentioned many issues in the draft resolution and China’s major concerns about it, considering the fragile and severe situation in Gaza, the imperative of maintaining the ceasefire, and the positions of the regional countries and Palestine, China abstained in the vote. It must also be noted that our concerns and worries remain. The Security Council must maintain close attention to the situation in Gaza and the Palestinian question. The Palestinian question lies at the heart of the Middle East issues. It is a matter about international equity and justice. The international community must steadfastly advance the two-State solution and pursue the political settlement of the Palestinian question. It means establishing an independent Palestinian state with full sovereignty on the basis of the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, therefore realizing the Palestinian people’s right to statehood, survival. and return. China has always firmly supported the just cause of the Palestinian people in restoring their legitimate national rights. We stand ready to work with the international community to make unremitting efforts for a comprehensive, just, and lasting solution to the Palestinian question. 

Dissenting Views

Decide for yourself whether Russia’s and China’s explanations sufficiently justify their abstentions. Journalist Ali Abunimah, executive director of The Electronic Intifada, has argued to the contrary, writing on November 18, 2025:

UNSC Resolution 2803 is so counter and so devastating to norms of international law, the UN Charter and the right to self-determination and sovereignty for all peoples, that Russia, China, Britain and France were obligated to veto it, no matter what Arab regimes and Palestinian collaborators with Israel advised. Obviously, since France and Britain are open enemies of the Palestinian people and their rights and possess no sovereignty of their own as mere puppet regimes of Washington, they would only ever have supported it. That leaves Russia and China who purport to uphold these principles, and the more I read this resolution and analyses about it, the more it is clear to me that they had an obligation to veto it that transcends the Palestinian issue, to the extent that they still believe that the UN system matters at all. I find no way around that.

Abunimah elaborated on this days later during a podcast with human rights lawyer Craig Mokhiber, who generally agreed, stating in part…

READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE FOR FREE HERE: https://decensored.news/russian-ambassador-roger-waters-board-of-peace-un-resolution-mansour/

The full story is too long to fit in an email, but it contains more analysis from Craig Mokhiber and Dimitri Lascaris, and a little-known speech we dug up showing Ambassador Mansour, on behalf of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, praising Resolution 2803. We also tried contacting the Palestinian Mission to the UN with some questions. The article continues at the link above.

Decensored News is an independent, reader-supported publication. If you value our work, please help us grow and produce more of it with a monthly or one-time contribution. We can’t do this work without you. For more reporting like this, follow us on multiple platforms, bookmark the website, and subscribe here on Substack:

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The New Mexico House of Representatives on Monday passed a resolution creating a “special committee” consisting of two House Republicans and two House Democrats which will “investigate Zorro ranch and the related allegations of criminal activity.”

Specifically, they are to “determine whether legislation or other legislative action is needed” to accomplish any of the the following:

• “prevent and properly punish crime”

• “protect children and other vulnerable persons”

• “establish sufficient procedures for securing civil justice”

• “ensure proper use and stewardship of public money and resources”

• “provide for public accountability”

The vote was 62-0, and according to a local Albuquerque, New Mexico news station (KRQE) the four committee members have already been appointed and will hold their first meeting on Tuesday Morning.

Per the resolution, the committee must “keep records of its work” and provide reports on the following schedule.

July 31, 2026 (or before): Interim report to House leadership

Dec 31, 2026 (or before): Final report to all House members, which is to include the committee’s “findings and conclusions”

Zorro Ranch was owned by Jeffrey Epstein for decades prior to his alleged “suicide” in 2019.

Don Huffines and San Rafael

This comes days after a local newspaper called the Santa Fe New Mexican published a widely-cited article with the headline, "Texas businessman running for office owns Epstein's Zorro Ranch in Santa Fe County," in which they reported:

The family of Texas businessman and politician Donald Huffines owns the late Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch in southern Santa Fe County, which was purchased in 2023 by a limited liability company created just a month before the purchase.

Huffines, a former GOP state senator from Dallas, is now running a high-profile campaign for comptroller — a statewide office in Texas overseeing state financial matters.

Records obtained by The New Mexican also show the ranch has been renamed San Rafael Ranch and its address, formerly 49 Zorro Ranch Road, is now 49 Rancho San Rafael Road. The change was made in 2024.

Huffines’ campaign spokesperson Allen Blakemore reportedly said in a statement on Friday:

Four years after Mr. Epstein’s death, the Huffines family purchased property in New Mexico listed at public auction whose proceeds benefited his victims. Prior to the auction listing, they had never visited the property.

According to The Texas Tribune:

In a follow-up statement Monday, Blakemore said the family had not been approached by any authorities to search the property but would cooperate should they be. The statement was released in the wake of calls from officials in New Mexico for federal and state authorities to open a probe after an email recently surfaced that two girls may be buried at the ranch or near it.

A report last week by the publication Source NM provided some insight into the "burial" allegations and the anonymous 2019 email:

New Mexico Commissioner of Public Lands Stephanie Garcia Richard on Tuesday called on federal and state law enforcement to investigate allegations that two girls were buried in the hills surrounding convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch.

The allegations are contained in an anonymous email that conservative talk show host and former Albuquerque mayoral candidate Eddy Aragon received in November 2019, several months after Epstein died in federal custody, and are part of the trove of recently released Epstein documents.

The email came from an encrypted account from someone who claims to have been a former staff member at Zorro Ranch, the 7,500-acre property Epstein purchased from former New Mexico Gov. Bruce King in 1993, who had “been there and seen it all.”

The letter’s author says two “foreign girls” died of strangulation during “rough, fetish sex” and were later buried on “orders of Jeffrey and Madam G,” a potential reference to Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s associate and former business partner currently serving a two-decade federal prison sentence for sex trafficking.

The letter does not say when the girls might have died or when or where they were buried, except that the burial site is “somewhere in the hills outside the Zorro.” The author also claims to have taken seven videos from Epstein’s home, including ones depicting sex with minors, as “insurance in case of future litigation against Epstein.”

The author offered to send the videos on a thumb drive to Aragon in exchange for 1 bitcoin, an untraceable digital currency, that would have been worth about $8,000 at the time.

Aragon told Source New Mexico in a phone interview Tuesday that he forwarded the letter to the FBI right after receiving it and that he did not respond to the author or pay for the videos.

“It felt very legitimate to me,” he said of the letter. “That’s why I forwarded it.”

He said he received assurances from the FBI at the time that investigators would tell him whether they investigated and what they found, but he never heard anything back.

In addition to allegations that Epstein engaged in sexual abuse at the ranch, the New York Times reported in 2019 that it was the location where he hoped to “seed the human race with his DNA” by impregnating women.

“Mr. Epstein’s vision reflected his longstanding fascination with what has become known as transhumanism: the science of improving the human population through technologies like genetic engineering and artificial intelligence,” the Times wrote. “Critics have likened transhumanism to a modern-day version of eugenics, the discredited field of improving the human race through controlled breeding.”

They went on later in the same article:

On multiple occasions starting in the early 2000s, Mr. Epstein told scientists and businessmen about his ambitions to use his New Mexico ranch as a base where women would be inseminated with his sperm and would give birth to his babies, according to two award-winning scientists and an adviser to large companies and wealthy individuals, all of whom Mr. Epstein told about it.

It was not a secret. The adviser, for example, said he was told about the plans not only by Mr. Epstein, at a gathering at his Manhattan townhouse, but also by at least one prominent member of the business community. One of the scientists said Mr. Epstein divulged his idea in 2001 at a dinner at the same townhouse; the other recalled Mr. Epstein discussing it with him at a 2006 conference that he hosted in St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands.

The idea struck all three as far-fetched and disturbing. There is no indication that it would have been against the law.

Once, at a dinner at Mr. Epstein’s mansion on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Mr. Lanier said he talked to a scientist who told him that Mr. Epstein’s goal was to have 20 women at a time impregnated at his 33,000-square-foot Zorro Ranch in a tiny town outside Santa Fe. Mr. Lanier said the scientist identified herself as working at NASA, but he did not remember her name.

Don Huffines, meanwhile, said on Monday evening that he's planning to turn the former (now renamed) Zorro Ranch into a "Christian retreat,” and that reports attempting to paint his ownership of the property as nefarious are "last-minute lies and dirty tricks" by his political opponents, adding that he has always been willing to give local authorities “immediate access and full cooperation”:

In 2023, four years after Epstein’s death, San Rafael Ranch had been listed on the open market for years and was scheduled for public auction.

At the time of the sale, it was marketed that the proceeds would go to the victims. It has since been confirmed by the estate’s attorneys that proceeds from the sale benefited the victims.

What the enemy once meant for evil, God can redeem for good. That’s why we renamed the property San Rafael, after the saint associated with physical and spiritual healing, and began plans immediately to remake it as a Christian retreat, reclaiming it for Jesus. Even the new entrance will reflect that mission and will read, “BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO COME IN THE NAME OF THE LORD.”

By 2024, my family’s ownership was public and had been posted on social media.

We have always maintained an open line of communication with local authorities. No law enforcement agency has ever approached me to request access, and I have always said unequivocally that any such request would be met with immediate access and full cooperation.

This is what desperate political opponents do: last-minute lies and dirty tricks.

‘Dig Up The Ranch, Thomas’

Huffines has been active in Republican politics for years. He’s the founder of the Huffines Liberty Foundation, and has reportedly known Senator Rand Paul’s family since the 1990s. When Paul ran for President in 2015-2016, he tapped Huffines to chair his campaign.

As it turns out, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) — who co-sponsored the Epstein Files Transparency Act and has been one of its most outspoken proponents in Congress — also has a longstanding relationship with Huffines.

“I’ve known Don for many years,” Massie said in a video in January of 2022. “He’s a true fighter. He’s a defender of personal liberty and economic freedom. He’s exactly the kind of person Texas needs to lead them.”

While sharing the clip on social media that month, Huffines — who was running for governor of Texas at the time — thanked Massie for his support and called him a "good friend," "champion of liberty," and "fierce advocate for his constituents in Congress."

As another example, the two were photographed together in April 2024, and Huffines said while sharing the photo on X that it was "such a pleasure to host @RepThomasMassie in Dallas these last few days."

“They need to dig up the ranch, Thomas,” one user said on Monday morning in response to a post Massie made about the Epstein files.

“Absolutely needs to be investigated,” Massie replied minutes later, garnering over 2,900 likes.

WAIT! Very quickly before you go: Decensored News is an independent, reader-supported publication. If you value our work, please help us grow and produce more of it with a monthly or one-time contribution. We can’t do this work without you. This story was originally published at decensored.news. Image Credit: Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0). For more reporting like this, follow us on multiple platforms, bookmark the website, and subscribe here on Substack:

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The latest trove of Epstein files have already yielded plenty of new revelations about the rich and powerful, and researchers and journalists are continuing to pour over the millions of documents.

One of the notable photos we came across: Noam Chomsky sitting at a dining table with Jeffrey Epstein and Woody Allen:

This appears to be at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse.

There are two women in the photo as well, but their faces have been censored by the Department of Justice (DOJ).

The woman next to Chomsky looks like she could be Ghislaine Maxwell or his wife Valeria (who he married in 2014).

The one next to Allen may be his wife Soon-Yi Previn.

Here’s a closer look:

We found this in EFTA01644670, a PDF file released by the DOJ under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. It’s on p. 92 and labeled EFTA01644761.

Many of the other pages of the file contain censored photos of nude or partially nude females.

A photo published by New York Magazine’s Intelligencer in 2019 showed Epstein in the same room. It was taken by photographer Christopher Anderson, and the caption reads, “Epstein in his townhouse in 2015”:

Anderson published several more photos from the same shoot on his Instagram recently and discussed his experience meeting Epstein:

Here’s yet another pic of Epstein in the same room, taken from a Telegraph article. Note the animal print chairs and unique wall design, matching the previous photos, including the one with Chomsky:

It’s been reported for several years now that Chomsky had met and dined with Epstein, Allen, and Previn.

Canada’s Global News wrote in 2023, for instance (bold added):

Chomsky, an American linguist and political activist, met with Epstein on a number of occasions throughout 2015 and 2016. He told the WSJ he and Epstein met to discuss politics and academia.

One such meeting was allegedly with Chomsky, Epstein and former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak.

As part of another meeting, Epstein scheduled a flight for Chomsky, 94, to have dinner with director Woody Allen and his wife, Soon-Yi Previn.

Chomsky’s answer to a [Wall Street Journal] inquiry about whether or not he met with Epstein was simple. He wrote: “First response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone’s. Second is that I knew him and we met occasionally.”

In response to meeting specifically with Epstein and Allen, Chomsky told the WSJ, “I’m unaware of the principle that requires that I inform you about an evening spent with a great artist.”

Chomsky added that “what was known about Jeffrey Epstein was that he had been convicted of a crime and had served his sentence. According to U.S. laws and norms, that yields a clean slate.”

Associated Press (bold added):

Ruemmler and Allen were among a long list of notable people who maintained friendships with Epstein for years, even though he was a registered sex offender who had been accused of abusing children, and whose legal problems had been widely covered in newspapers.

Some of the guests who accompanied Allen and Previn to dinners with Epstein included talk show host Dick Cavett, linguist Noam Chomsky and the late comedian David Brenner. Epstein also attended screenings of Allen’s movies and, according to emails, would visit with Allen so he could watch him edit his latest film.

Chomsky’s relationship with Epstein has been coming into clearer focus thanks to the Epstein files.

The Guardian characterizes it as a “close friendship” and says that their “personal familiarity” is “palpable” in some exchanges.

UPDATE: Chomsky’s wife Valeria has now put out a statement in which she says that she and her husband “attended dinners” (plural) at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse and “stayed a few times in an apartment he offered when we visited New York City.”

She attempts to portray their relationship as Epstein taking advantage of Chomsky’s “overly trusting nature” and says they were “careless in not thoroughly researching his background.”

Read her full statement here, and this analysis by , who says that it’s “filled with the fatuous excuses used by all those who have been outed in the Epstein emails and documents,” also writing in part:

Her letter regurgitates the formula of everyone outed in the Epstein files. I know and have long admired Noam. He is, arguably, our greatest and most principled intellectual. I can assure you he is not as passive or gullible as his wife claims. He knew about Epstein’s abuse of children. They all knew. And like others in the Epstein orbit, he did not care. . . . He was not fooled by Epstein. He was seduced.

Meanwhile, journalist Alan MacLeod has uncovered a series of correspondences between Valeria and Epstein over the course of several years where she gushes about how Epstein — who treated them to a $1400/night suite in a Manhattan hotel and a luxurious stay in Paris — is a “hero“ and “very dear friend.”

“Dear Jeffrey,” she wrote to Epstein on July 1, 2017. “We count you as our best friend. I mean ‘the’ one. It is always great to see you.”

“You are our best friend, we love you,” she wrote in another email in October 2018.

On Februrary 8, 2018, Chomsky himself thanked Jeffrey Epstein for “the gift of friendship over these years.”

“Valeria and I just want to tell you that it’s one of the greatest experiences of our life to have you as a friend, and to remain so and cherish this permanent relationship,” he said in an email ten months later.

“Thx means alot,” Epstein replied.

WAIT! Very quickly before you go: Decensored News is an independent, reader-supported publication. If you value our work, please help us grow and produce more of it with a monthly or one-time contribution. We can’t do this work without you. Photo credit: Rick Carter, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (CC BY-SA 2.0). This story was originally published at decensored.news. For more reporting like this, follow us on multiple platforms, bookmark the website, and subscribe here on Substack:

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The World Economic Forum’s annual meeting is underway in Davos, Switzerland, and as expected a major topic of discussion so far has been “artificial intelligence” (AI).

During a session on Tuesday entitled “The Day After AGI” — clips of which appear below — Dario Amodei, the billionaire CEO of Anthropic, couldn’t stop smiling and laughing while talking about how AI creates “immense and grave risks” for humanity, including the possibility of us outright “destroying” ourselves with it.

Watch:

“I think the next few years we’re going to be dealing with, you know, how do we keep these systems under control that are highly autonomous and smarter than any human?” Amodei said.

“How do we make sure that individuals don’t misuse them?… I have worries about things like bioterrorism… How do we make sure that nation states don’t misuse them? That’s why I’ve been so concerned about the CCP, other authoritarian governments…

“So, you know, I’m thinking through how to address those risks…”

“There’s all kinds of crazy stuff going on in the outside world, outside AI… But my view is this is happening so fast, it is such a crisis, we should be devoting (laughs) almost all our effort to thinking about how to get through this...”

As we reported last month, xAI CEO Elon Musk similarly laughed his way through a recent discussion about the dangers of AI and humanoid robots, which he said will ultimately “be in charge” of society, “not humans.”

“Obviously it’s very important we pay attention to safety here,” Musk said. “Cause uhh, we do—we do want the Star Wars movie, not the Jim Cameron movie,” presumably a reference to Cameron’s 1984 sci-fi film The Terminator.

“I love Jim Cameron’s movies, but, you know, uhh, (laughs). You know what I mean. (laughs).”

WAIT! Very quickly before you go: Decensored News is an independent, reader-supported publication. If you value our work, please help us grow and produce more of it with a monthly or one-time contribution. We can’t do this work without you. This story was originally published at decensored.news. Video and photo source: World Economic Forum (CC BY 4.0). Edited by Decensored News. For more reporting like this, follow us on multiple platforms, bookmark the website, and subscribe here on Substack:

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We’re only two weeks into 2026, but it’s already been quite a year for Benjamin Netanyahu’s “dear personal friend” Lindsey Graham.

The notorious war hawk and genocidal Zionist clearly has the ear of the President, who has called Graham a “terrific guy” and endorsed his reelection bid.

After Trump attacked Venezuela and abducted its president Nicolas Maduro earlier this month, the delighted Senator appeared alongside the President on Air Force One, where he said: “You just wait for Cuba... their days are numbered.”

“Lindsey Graham is easily one of the top two or three most influential Senators on Trump’s foreign policy,” journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote last week. “He’s perpetually, and understandably, ecstatic. His war and regime-change vision prevails.”

A few days ago, Graham — who has been lusting after the idea of attacking Iran for years — shared a photo of himself giving a thumbs up next to Trump while the President held a signed “Make Iran Great Again” ball cap.

“I am so proud of [President Trump] and [Secretary of State Marco Rubio] for being in the corner of the people of Iran and their protests against oppression,” Graham wrote.

"The Make Iran Great Again hat that I showcased with President Trump has clearly become – in his own words now – a symbol of support for the protestors. Buy or make a MIGA hat – stand with the people of Iran who are rightly protesting against their oppression."

While Graham and Trump's recent statements about Iran have prompted widespread criticism and revulsion, there's one notable voice missing from that chorus: Charlie Kirk.

‘Pathologically Insane’

It’s fairly well known that Kirk stood in opposition to calls from hawks like Graham to overthrow Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prior to his September 10, 2025 assassination in Utah. The late TPUSA founder even met with Trump last year and told him that the younger voters he speaks with on college campuses are “war weary” and “don’t want foreign conflict” or “foreign intervention.”

We decided to take a look back at some of Kirk’s statements at the time, and were struck by how a number of them sound just as urgent and relevant now as they did when he made them.

In a segment from his eponymous show resurfaced and edited by Decensored News late Sunday night, for instance, Kirk railed against Graham and the neocons’ push for regime change in Iran, calling it “pathologically insane.”

Watch:

“Lindsey Graham is so consistently out of his mind it’s hard to even comprehend,” Kirk said.

“Iran is hugely diverse. It is a massive country. Do the people agitating for war even know that? Because [let’s] be clear: regime change is war…”

“You’re talking about a country two and a half times the size of Texas [that] has 90 million people and was an ancient and great power with well over a dozen ethnic groups…”

“Who’s gonna run the country, exactly, Lindsey Graham? This sounds like Hillary Rodham Clinton in Libya…”

As seen in the video above, Kirk went on to contrast the neocons with the “other extreme” represented by non-interventionists like Ron Paul — a view he said that he has “deep respect and reverence for.”

“I LOVE Ron Paul. Ron Paul is awesome. I would have Ron Paul on my show regularly. He is a hero…. I actually agree with this other extreme A LOT…”

“I honestly don’t think the neoconservative extreme needs to be represented philosophically anymore. It’s uninteresting to me. They’ve done a mess of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, the entire Middle East, Ukraine…”

“‘TAKE OUT THE AYATOLLAH!’ Resist that temptation. That’s not prudence. That’s not self-control… That’s a zeal. And the very same zeal got us involved in a pile of GARBAGE in Iraq… A lot of people died, a lot of Americans died, unnecessarily…”

These clips are from June 17, 2025, less than three months before he was assassinated.

The ‘Prudent Middle’?

To be clear: Kirk wasn’t a non-interventionist, including on Iran.

Despite his praise for Ron Paul and everything else he said in the clips above, he went on in the same segment to paint Trump as a master of “realpolitik” who sits in the “very prudent middle” between the two “extremes.”

“He’s not an isolationist or a neocon,” Kirk insisted. “He’s an American patriot.”

Kirk claimed that Trump “rejects” the neocons and “doesn’t believe in regime change,” but presented the potential bombing of Fordow — which happened days later — as something Americans should be open to and “trust” Trump to make a decision on.

The President ran on two things, Kirk said: avoiding another “bloody catastrophe and disaster” like Iraq and stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon — and both of them can “simultaneously be true” thanks to Trump’s “approach.”

“Only President Trump, with prudence and practicality and wisdom, is able to weigh them both, thread the needle, and walk the tightrope,” he gushed.

“President Donald Trump is a man made for this moment. And we should trust him.”

Kirk laid it on thick after Trump bombed Fordow. In an interview with Fox News’ Will Cain, for instance, he praised the strike as a “master class,” in large part based on the premise that it was “not about regime change,” and that Trump “wrapped it all up” quickly with a “peace deal.”

“He did it with no boots on the ground, no endless war, no U.S. troops being killed, no nation-building,” Kirk said.

“President Donald Trump is only interested in nation-building one nation. That is the United States of America.”

“I think that’s exactly right, Charlie,” Cain agreed. “America First was never isolationist. It was never pacifist. It was also never interventionist.”

“It’s a strategy — one that requires a strong and competent and wise leader who you trust will put the interest first of America. And I think that’s what we’ve seen play out...”

Did Kirk actually believe this? Judge for yourself.

What’s clear is that this portrait of Trump as some kind of anti-“neocon” who is “non-interventionist” and anti-“regime change” has become increasingly untenable since his assassination.

Would Kirk have fallen in line and defended what’s going on now, or spoken out against it?

We can only speculate.

WAIT! Very quickly before you go: Decensored News is an independent, reader-supported publication. If you value our work, please help us grow and produce more of it with a monthly or one-time contribution. We can’t do this work without you. This story was originally published at decensored.news. For more reporting like this, follow us on multiple platforms, bookmark the website, and subscribe here on Substack:

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After days of radio silence, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard — who previously ran for president as an outspoken opponent of “regime change wars” in general and in Venezuela in particular — has now publicly praised the U.S. attack on Venezuela and abduction of its president Nicolas Maduro.

“President Trump promised the American people he would secure our borders, confront narcoterrorism, dangerous drug cartels, and drug traffickers,” she wrote on X on Tuesday.

“Kudos to our servicemen and women and intelligence operators for their flawless execution of President Trump’s order to deliver on his promise thru Operation Absolute Resolve.”

Her last post on X prior to the January 3 military operation was two days earlier, on January 1, when she posted photos of herself stretching meditatively on a beach to her personal account.

“My heart is filled with gratitude, aloha and peace,” she wrote, adding a “prayer hands” emoji and “2026” hashtag. She also posted the same thing on Instagram.

“American politicians right before they start bombing other countries,” quipped a user named Sopo Japaridze while quoting Gabbard’s post a couple of days later, shortly after Trump’s middle-of-the-night Venezuela op began. The comment got over 76,000 likes.

‘The Height of Swamp Politics’

During her 2019-2020 presidential campaign, Gabbard — who was a sitting Democrat member of Congress at the time representing Hawaii’s 2nd congressional district — repeatedly denounced plans to meddle in countries like Venezuela and Iran and overthrow their leaders.

Here’s a sample of some of her posts on Twitter at the time:

• “The United States needs to stay out of Venezuela. Let the Venezuelan people determine their future. We don’t want other countries to choose our leaders--so we have to stop trying to choose theirs.” (Jan 24, 2019)

• “It’s about the oil … again. Bolton just exposed real motive for intervention in Venezuela: ‘We’re in conversation with major American companies now…It would make a difference if we could have American companies produce the oil in Venezuela. We both have a lot at stake here.’” (Jan 28, 2019)

• “Trump campaigned against regime change wars when he ran for President but now bows to the wishes of the neocons around him, clamoring for the regime change wars he claimed to oppose, this time in Venezuela and Iran. These powerful politicians dishonor the sacrifices made by every one of our service members, and their families - they are the ones who pay the price for these wars.” (Feb 2, 2019)

• “The root cause of mass immigration on our southern border is our history of US military intervention in Latin America that left countries destroyed. Before we talk about a wall, we need to end our ongoing threats of intervention - this time in Venezuela. #SOTU” (Feb 5, 2019)

• “The US must stay out of Venezuela & let the people determine their own future. US meddling in Latin America has been disastrous for the people of the countries where we intervene. Pence’s ‘demand’ is inappropriate and dangerous” (Feb 22, 2019)

• “Oil lobbyists have ‘unprecedented access’ to Trump’s administration—meanwhile Pence/Bolton continue their crusade for regime change in Venezuela, the world’s richest oil reserves. The height of swamp politics.” (April 4, 2019)

• “Trump is surrounded by neocon war hawks who supported regime change wars in Libya, Iraq, Syria…now they’re calling for overthrow the govts of Venezuela and Iran, and the result will be the same: thousands of lives lost, trillions wasted, more suffering” (April 16, 2019)

• “Neocons/Neolibs & MSM all sing from the same songsheet: War war war!!! Trump never gets positive media unless he’s threatening war/carrying out military action. Today, Venezuela. Tomorrow, Iran? Cuba? Who’s next? No wonder NK won’t give up their nukes” (May 2, 2019)

• Throughout history, every time the US topples a foreign country’s dictator/government, the outcome has been disastrous. Civil war/military intervention in Venezuela will wreak death & destruction to Venezuelan people, and increase tensions that threaten our national security. (May 13, 2019)

Gabbard said the same basic thing during TV interviews that year, warning that Trump was surrounded by “neocon war hawks” who were beating the war drums for "regime change efforts" in Venezuela and Iran that will be "very, very costly."

“President Trump is acting not with our interests in mind, not with the American people’s interest in mind,” she said during an April 2019 MSNBC interview with Chris Matthews.

Then-members of Trump’s cabinet have a “very well-known” history of “leading our country into one regime change war after the other,” Gabbard noted, costing a “great expense in American lives… trillions of [taxpayer] dollars… as well as the lives and the suffering and the devastation of the people in the countries where we’ve waged these wars.”

“When we look throughout history, every time the United States goes into another country and topples a dictator or topples a government, the outcome has been disastrous,” she said in a separate interview with Fox News the following month.

“Pushing for the use of military force will only end up with more suffering and death and disaster for the Venezuelan people,” she added — not to mention increasing “tensions” that “threaten our own national security.”

Gabbard's Role

As Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Gabbard serves as the head of the Intelligence Community (IC), which is comprised of 18 agencies and organizations within the Executive Branch.

This includes the CIA, which Trump authorized to carry out covert action inside of Venezuela months ago, and which was reportedly the agency that carried out a drone strike on a port facility on the country’s coast in early December.

The CIA also prepared an “intelligence assessment” on who was “best positioned to lead a temporary government in Caracas” if Maduro “lost power,” according to a report by the Wall Street Journal citing unnamed “people familiar with the matter.”

“Senior Trump administration officials commissioned the CIA to undertake the analytical assessment and debated it during discussions about day-after plans for Venezuela,” the Journal said, citing the same sources.

With Maduro now captive in America, Trump said over the weekend that the U.S. will now “run” Venezuela, and that “very large U.S. oil companies” will “go in“ to the country and “spend billions of dollars” to increase output and profits.

"They were pumping almost nothing by comparison to what they could have been pumping," he said, adding that they're "ready to stage a second and much larger attack" if needed.

On Tuesday, Trump said in a post on Truth Social that “the Interim Authorities in Venezuela” will be “turning over” between 30 and 50 million barrels of oil to the United States.

“This Oil will be sold at its Market Price,” he said, “and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States!”

“I have asked Energy Secretary Chris Wright to execute this plan, immediately. It will be taken by storage ships, and brought directly to unloading docks in the United States.”

Farcical Proclamations

Barely over two months ago, Gabbard made worldwide news by claiming that Trump represented an end to business as usual in the sphere of foreign policy, including an end to the “endless cycle of regime change” and “nation building.”

While attending a conference in Bahrain, Gabbard delivered a speech on October 31 in which (per her office’s official website) she “highlighted President Trump’s historic record of peace,” stating in part:

As someone who serves under President Trump's leadership, I have experienced the promise of peace. His vision is about delivering real wins, not just for America, but for our collective cause of peace and prosperity, and doing so through a very principled realism, rooted in shared goals, interests, and values. The old Washington way of thinking is something we hope is in the rear-view mirror and something that has held us back for too long. For decades, our foreign policy has been trapped in a counterproductive and endless cycle of regime change or nation-building. It was a one-size-fits-all approach of toppling regimes, trying to impose our system of governance on others, intervening in conflicts that were barely understood, and walking away with more enemies than allies. The result: trillions spent, countless lives lost, and in many cases, a creation of greater security threats, the rise of Islamist terrorist groups like ISIS. President Trump was elected by the American people to put an end to this, and from day one, he has shown a very different way to conduct foreign policy.

Watch:

Some of the headlines at the time:

• US national intelligence director says former American strategy of ‘regime change’ is over (Associated Press)

• Gabbard: Trump Ended America’s Era of ‘Regime Change’ (The American Conservative)

• American strategy of ‘regime change’ is over — US national intelligence director (Turkey’s TRT World)

• US spy chief claims strategy of ‘regime change’ is over (China’s Global Times,)

In addition to supporting a livestreamed genocide in Gaza, Trump bombed seven different countries in 2025, and was already actively conducting deadly strikes off the coast of Venezuela and plotting regime change when she made those comments.

“Gabbard needs to resign now - or be unmasked as one of the biggest political frauds of our era,” journalist Patrick wrote on January 3 while re-sharing the video clip.

“Today we see the bombs raining down on Venezuela, US troops deployed in another ‘regime change war’ based on 100% fake intelligence and fabricated evidence. Here’s the supposed ‘Director of National Intelligence’ on October 31, 2025 claiming Trump was putting an end to Washington’s endless ‘regime change’ and ‘nation-building.’… Not to mention [his] ‘nation-building’ holocaust in Gaza which Tulsi has supported from day one of the genocide.”

“It’s more than likely Tulsi has been promised funding for a Presidential run in 2028,” he added. “That’s how they buy ambitious careerists like her. This is beyond a joke.”

“At risk of stating the obvious, its clear that RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard were enrolled into MAGA to get the easily-duped anti-imperialist right/center to support a Zionist neoconservative imperium,” opined. “The only question is whether this was always the plan or pure opportunism.”

“[I’ve] been telling people for years and years that Trump et al is the opposable thumb of the establishment,” journalist wrote last month. “Gabbard was obvious con; she wouldn’t challenge Biden on his Iraq invasion lies on the debate stage. Why do people keep having to pretend some of these hyped figures have honor?”

“Everyone who thought this imperial Zionist tool Gabbard was some sort of peacenik needs to seriously reconsider how they do politics,” he said in another post months earlier.

WAIT! Very quickly before you go: Decensored News is an independent, reader-supported publication. If you value our work, please help us grow and produce more of it with a monthly or one-time contribution. We can’t do this work without you. This story was originally published at decensored.news. Image Credit: Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0), modified from the original. For more reporting like this, follow us on multiple platforms, bookmark the website, and subscribe here on Substack:

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Asked if “we’re gonna see Americans on the corners of Venezuela” or “in the government of Venezuela,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that Trump will “set the terms” and “dictate what’s next.”

Asked point blank “Who is in charge?” and ”Are you running Venezuela right now?” Secretary of State Marco Rubio complained that people keep “fixating on that,” then pivoted to a speech about how they “expect to see changes in Venezuela.”

When pressed again – “Is it you? Is it Secretary Hegseth? Who are those people who will be running the country, specifically?” — he vaguely said that he is “involved” in “running policy,” and that the Department of Defense (DOD) and Department of Justice (DOJ) play “important roles,” without providing any real details about who from these organizations will “run” the country or what their specific roles will be.

Venezuela is over 1,000 miles away from the United States and larger than the states of Texas and Florida combined.

Trump during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday:

We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition. So we don’t want to be involved with, uh, having somebody else get in and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years. So we are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition. We’ve had decades of that. We’re not going to let that happen. We’re there now, and what people don’t understand but they understand as I, as I say this. We’re there now, but we’re going to stay until such time as the pop- -- proper transition can take place. So we’re gonna stay until such time as, we’re gonna run it, essentially, until such time as a proper transition can take place.

Hegseth on CBS Evening News later that day:

Q: There are questions about what happens next in Venezuela. The President said today that the U.S. is gonna be running the country. What does that look like? Does that mean we’re gonna see Americans on the corners of Venezuela? In the government of Venezuela? Are you prepared to see troops on the ground in Venezuela?

HEGSETH: Well it means we set the terms. President Trump sets the terms. And ultimately he'll decide what the iterations are of that. But it means the drugs stop flowing. It means the oil that was taken from us is returned, ultimately. And that criminals are not sent to the United States. It means that foreign countries don't have a lodgment inside our hemisphere. So ultimately we're gonna control what happens next due to this brave decision. President Trump has shown American leadership, and he'll be able to dictate where we go next.

Rubio on Meet the Press on Sunday:

Q: Mr. Secretary, who is in charge? Are you running Venezuela right now?

RUBIO: Yeah, I mean, I keep – people, you know, fixating on that. Here’s the bottom line on it, is we expect to see changes in Venezuela. Changes of all kinds, long-term, short-term, we’d love to see all kinds of changes. But the most immediate changes are the ones that are in the national interest of the United States. That’s why we’re involved here because of how it applies, it has a direct impact on the United States. We are not going to be able to allow in our hemisphere a country that becomes a crossroads for the activities of all of our adversaries around the world. We just can’t allow it. We can’t have a country where the people in charge of its military and in charge of its police department are openly cooperating with drug trafficking organizations. We can’t. We’re not going to allow that. These things are direct threats to the United States. And we intend to use every element of leverage that we have to ensure that that changes. The one I would point everyone to is that our military is helping the Coast Guard conduct a law enforcement function which is not just the capture of Maduro, but the enforcement of our sanctions. We go to court. We get a warrant. We seize the boat. And we think this is tremendous leverage, incredible crippling leverage, which we intend to continue to use until we see the changes that we need to see that are benefit to the American people, and by the way we believe for the people of Venezuela as well.

Q: But Mr. Secretary, I think there’s a lot of questions about who the point people are during this transition. President Trump said, “We’re going to run the country.” So is it you? Is it Secretary Hegseth? Who are those people who will be running the country, specifically?

RUBIO: Well, it’s running policy, the policy with regards to this. We want Venezuela to move in a certain direction because not only do we think it’s good for the people of Venezuela, it’s in our national interest. It either touches on something that’s a threat to our national security, or touches on something that’s either beneficial or harmful to our –

Q: And are you involved in that transition, Secretary?

RUBIO: And so obviously I’m very involved in this. Well, of course. I mean, I think everyone knows I’m pretty involved on politics in this hemisphere obviously as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, very involved in all these elements. The Department of War plays a very important role here along with the Department of Justice, for example, because they’re the ones that have to go to court. So this is a team effort by the entire national security apparatus of our country. But it is running this policy. And the goal of the policy is to see changes in Venezuela that are beneficial to the United States first and foremost, because that’s who we work for, but also we believe beneficial for the people of Venezuela who have suffered tremendously. We want a better future for Venezuela. And we think a better future for the people of Venezuela also is stabilizing for the region and makes the neighborhood we live in a much better and safer place.

Trump also said on Saturday that “very large U.S. oil companies” will “go in” to Venezuela and “spend billions of dollars” to increase output and profits.

When a reporter asked him whether it was “possible that the U.S. ends up administrating Venezuela for years,” Trump didn’t give a direct answer:

Well, ya know, it won't cost us anything, because the money coming out of the ground is very substantial. So it's not going to cost us anything. We’re going to be rebuilding, and we're not spending money; the oil companies are gonna go in, they're gonna spend money, we're gonna take back the oil that frankly we should have taken back a long time ago. A lot of money is coming out of the ground. We're gonna get reimbursed for all of that. We're gonna get reimbursed for everything that we spend…

Decensored News is an independent, reader-supported publication. If you value our work, please help us grow and produce more of it with a monthly or one-time contribution. This article was originally published at decensored.news. For more reporting like this, follow us on multiple platforms, bookmark the website, and Subscribe here on Substack:

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Israel announced on Tuesday that it is suspending dozens of humanitarian aid organizations from operating in Gaza, including Doctors Without Borders.

They’re demanding that the groups comply with a new set of rules, including a requirement to register the full names and mobile phone numbers of their workers with the Israeli government, in addition to submitting copies of their passports and other personal details.

There are also ideological requirements. As they carry out a livestreamed holocaust, doing any of the following can get you barred:

• Denying “the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state”

• Calls for a boycott of Israel, or having an “officeholder, partner, board member, or founder” who has done so

• Promoting “delegitimization campaigns against the State of Israel”

• Expressing “support for legal proceedings against Israeli citizens in a foreign country or before an international tribunal, for actions carried out in the course of their duties in the Israel Defense Forces or in any security agency of the State of Israel”

• “Denying the massacre of October 7, 2023” as defined in Law 5785-2025.

International organizations “have said Israel’s rules are arbitrary and could endanger staff,” according to a report by NBC News.

The Israeli military has killed hundreds of aid workers in Gaza since October 2023 while systematically “targeting and destroying” its health care system (see pp. 8-19), a process which has included attacking aid convoys, detaining staff, bulldozing aid vehicles, and bombing and raiding hospitals.

They've also used their database of phone numbers to harass and intimidate journalists, including Hossam Shabat, who they later assassinated.

That's in addition to their well-known history of using spyware such as Pegasus to surveil the mobile devices of a wide range of targets, including government officials, journalists, activists, and protests leaders.

“Israel has been carrying out smear campaigns and delegitimizing campaigns against humanitarians and civil society for years,” says Oxfam’s Bushra Khalidi. “This is not something new, but this is kind of at a point where we need aid to access Gaza. People in Gaza are drowning in their tents. We had a child die of hypothermia last week. So, the need is so critical and urgent, that [this is] coming at a very difficult moment.”

Another group that Israel is barring, CARE, has been working in Palestinian communities since 1948. It’s one of the oldest and largest humanitarian organizations in the world and currently operates in 121 countries, including the United States.

The suspensions begin on Thursday, January 1.

‘Devastating Consequences’

According to their website, Doctors Without Borders — also known by their French name Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) — has ”over 1,000 staff working in Gaza’s hospitals and other health facilities.”

They support an estimated 20% of hospital beds and 1 in 3 births, per a statement provided to Mother Jones.

They’ve also helped produce and/or distribute millions of gallons of water since Israel’s genocidal onslaught began.

At least 15 of the aid workers killed in Gaza were members of their staff.

“In 2025 alone, MSF provided over 800,000 outpatient consultations, 100,000 trauma surgeries, [and] delivered over 10,000 babies,” says Ashley Killeen, acting executive director of MSF Australia. “So, it gives you a sense of the scale of the need that MSF is meeting, but also a sense of the gap that will be created if MSF is no longer allowed to operate in Gaza.”

“This will have devastating consequences for the Palestinians,” Doctors Without Borders Canada’s executive director Sana Bég told CTV News, adding it would be “a literal death sentence” for many of them.

“Countless people will imminently lose access to critical medical care, water, and lifesaving support if Israel revokes MSF’s access to work in Gaza,” the group said in a statement days earlier.

Given that Israel has “leveled most of Gaza’s infrastructure” and left countless people homeless, Palestinians in Gaza are “nearly fully reliant on aid for basic survival,” they added.

“With Gaza’s health system already destroyed, the loss of independent and experienced humanitarian organizations’ access to respond would be a disaster for Palestinians.”

Witnesses to Genocide

Israel barring Doctors Without Borders and other such groups from Gaza helps facilitate the genocide in more ways than one.

Besides the huge amount of medical care they provide, they’ve also been an important source of on-the-ground reporting about Israeli atrocities.

In early 2024, for instance, MSF’s Secretary General Christopher Lockyear gave a devastating update at the U.N. Security Council about Israel’s “systematic obliteration” of Gaza’s health care system:

Palestinian reporter Hani Mahmoud in Gaza made the same basic point during an interview with Al Jazeera Wednesday morning, stating:

Beyond just the material aid that is provided by these organizations, there are broader consequences here: visibility and accountability. Throughout the past two years [with] all these genocidal acts unfolding, these international organizations helped document the conditions on the ground. They maintain connection between Gaza and the outside world. So now forcing them out, suspending their operations, means further isolating Palestinians from the outside world. So the suffering becomes [easier] to overlook here, and the connection betweens Gazans and the outside world becomes less and less. And that’s the point that the Israeli military’s after.

This role is especially important considering that Israel already bars international journalists from Gaza and has targeted and killed a staggering number of local (Palestinian) journalists and media professionals since October 2023 — a tactic used by genocidal regimes throughout history to suppress vital information and hide their crimes.

Over 700 relatives of Palestinian journalists have also been killed during the same period, according to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, which called Israel’s “targeting the families and relatives” a “clear attempt to turn journalistic work into an existential burden for which sons, wives, fathers, and mothers pay the price.”

Calling It What It Is

Considering the ban on promoting “delegitimization campaigns against the State of Israel,” the vagueness of that term, and its subjective nature, it seems like Doctors Without Borders could be forbidden from returning to Gaza based solely on their truthful accounts of what’s happening there — not to mention the fact that they now openly and accurately refer to what the Israelis are doing as a genocide.

They initially deferred to experts on the question, with Lockyear stating in 2024, for instance:

What our medical teams have witnessed on the ground throughout this conflict is consistent with the descriptions provided by an increasing number of legal experts and organizations concluding that genocide is taking place in Gaza. While we don’t have legal authority to establish intentionality, the signs of ethnic cleansing and the ongoing devastation—including mass killings, severe physical and mental health injuries, forced displacement, and impossible conditions of life for Palestinians under siege and bombardment—are undeniable

Ultimately, they came to the same unavoidable conclusion as an independent UN commission, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and many others: Israel is committing genocide, and they have a responsibility to say so.

In addition to adding an entire “Gaza genocide” page to their website, the group now has a short explainer that answers the question, “Why is MSF referring to what’s happening as genocide?“ where they write:

This is not a term we use lightly. Our decision to describe what’s happening in Gaza as a ‘genocide’ is based on nearly two years of extensive, firsthand information from our teams, who are witnessing massive levels of death and destruction by Israeli forces, a campaign of ethnic cleansing and the almost total dismantling of the health care system.

Over the past 21 months, Israeli authorities have been responsible for mass killings, indiscriminate attacks, forced displacement, repeated failure to protect civilians, the deliberate destruction of homes and vital infrastructure, and the weaponisation of hunger in what amounts to collective punishment.

There have been multiple and well-documented dehumanising statements by Israeli officials calling for the annihilation of the population, or their transfer out of the Strip. The only reasonable inference is that the intention is to erase the Palestinian people from Gaza. This is why we believe that a genocide is taking place.

In the face of such atrocities, sanctioned and enabled by Israel’s allies, especially the United States and the United Kingdom, we believe it is our moral obligation to speak out with clarity.

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