Washington, D.C. — The Trump administration is manufacturing a foreign terror threat to justify cracking down on charities and protesters, according to a new State Department report that critics say has no basis in fact. Meanwhile, a foreign businessman under active investigation for money laundering funneled $100 million into Trump’s crypto company, and NOAA is pulling the plug on the flagship scientific report tracking the Arctic’s rapid warming.
State Department Invents a Foreign Terror Threat to Criminalize Dissent
A new State Department report claims Cuba is secretly directing “antifa” and a network of nonprofits, anti-ICE groups, and social justice organizations in the United States, laying the groundwork for the Trump administration to treat protected First Amendment activity as foreign-directed terrorism. The report singles out registered charities for organizing rallies, sending humanitarian aid to Cuba, and raising bail funds for protesters, none of which is illegal. Trump officials are inventing a foreign connection to give themselves cover to deploy surveillance, de-banking, and other counterterrorism tools against American citizens, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has already announced his department is expanding efforts to target nonprofits. The Global Project Against Hate & Extremism warns the report is building a framework to recast constitutionally protected speech as extremism, making future investigations and prosecutions of the administration’s critics easier to sell to the public.
Shady Foreign Businessman Under Active Money Laundering Investigation Wires $100 Million to Trump
A foreign businessman with a string of red flags, including an active UK money laundering investigation, a failed flooring business, and a collapsed crypto startup, funneled $100 million into Trump’s crypto company, World Liberty Financial, through a firm called Aqua 1. As much as $75 million of that money went directly to a company controlled by Trump and his three sons, and the deal also benefited the family of Steve Witkoff, who works for the administration. The businessman, Guren “Bobby” Zhou, kept a low profile about the investment for months, other than a brief appearance on an X audio stream where he said he was proud to be a major player in Trump’s family crypto venture. It’s not clear how closely, if at all, World Liberty scrutinized Zhou’s background before taking the money, even though his money laundering investigation was public record. Congressional Republicans like James Comer and Jim Jordan, who built their careers manufacturing corruption probes against Democrats, haven’t said a peep about any of this.
Trump Officials End Support for Flagship Arctic Climate Report
NOAA is cutting off support for the Arctic Report Card, the two-decade-old flagship federal assessment of how climate change is transforming the fastest-warming region on the planet. The move continues a pattern of Trump officials canceling climate programs and restricting the public’s access to climate science, following the dismissal of scientists working on the National Climate Assessment and the repeal of the EPA’s legal finding that climate change threatens the public. NOAA claims it will keep collecting the underlying data, but ending its coordination of the report leaves outside scientists scrambling to make sure the findings reach the public at all. The report informed national security policy, having been cited by NATO, and has for decades tracked the climate crisis that the Trump administration would rather Americans not think about.
###