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The Dictatorship

TRUMP THREATENS TO ATTACK IRAN…

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TRUMP THREATENS TO ATTACK IRAN…

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump said he ordered a series of airstrikes on the Houthi-held areas in Yemen on Saturday, promising to use “overwhelming lethal force” until the Iran-backed rebels cease their attacks on shipping along a vital maritime corridor. The Houthis said at least 31 people were killed, and Trump’s national security adviser said Sunday that the strikes had successfully targeted “multiple” Houthi leaders.

“Our brave Warfighters are right now carrying out aerial attacks on the terrorists’ bases, leaders, and missile defenses to protect American shipping, air, and naval assets, and to restore Navigational Freedom,” Trump said in a social media post. “No terrorist force will stop American commercial and naval vessels from freely sailing the Waterways of the World.”

He also warned Iran to stop supporting the rebel grouppromising to hold the country “fully accountable” for the actions of its proxy. It comes two weeks after the U.S. leader sent a letter to Iranian leaders offering a path to restarting bilateral talks between the countries on Iran’s advancing nuclear program. Trump has said he will not allow it to become operational.

“This was an overwhelming response that actually targeted multiple Houthi leaders and took them out,” Trump national security adviser Michael Waltz said on ABC’s “This Week.” that aired Sunday.

The Houthis reported explosions in their territory Saturday evening, in the capital of Sanaa and the northern province of Saada, the rebels’ stronghold on the border with Saudi Arabia, with more airstrikes reported in those areas early Sunday. Images online showed plumes of black smoke over the area of the Sanaa airport complex, which includes a sprawling military facility. The Houthis also reported airstrikes early Sunday on the provinces of Hodeida, Bayda, and Marib.

The Houthi-run Health Ministry said early Sunday that the death toll had climbed to 31, including women and children. Anees al-Asbahi, a spokesperson for the ministry, said Sunday that another 101 people were wounded.

Yemeni TV showed smoke rising above the capital Sanaa on Saturday night after US President Donald Trump said he ordered a series of airstrikes on Houthi-held areas in Yemen on Saturday.

This image taken from video provided by the U.S. Navy shows an aircraft launching from the USS Harry S. Truman in the Red Sea before airstrikes in Sanaa, Yemen, Saturday, March 15, 2025. (U.S. Navy via AP)

This image taken from video provided by the U.S. Navy shows an aircraft launching from the USS Harry S. Truman in the Red Sea before airstrikes in Sanaa, Yemen, Saturday, March 15, 2025. (U.S. Navy via AP)

President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, March 4, 2025. (Win McNamee/Pool Photo via AP)

President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, March 4, 2025. (Win McNamee/Pool Photo via AP)

A U.S. official said this was the beginning of air strikes on Houthi targets that are expected to continue. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press.

Nasruddin Amer, deputy head of the Houthi media office, said the airstrikes won’t deter them and they would retaliate against the U.S. “Sanaa will remain Gaza’s shield and support and will not abandon it no matter the challenges,” he added on social media.

Another spokesman, Mohamed Abdulsalam, on X, called Trump’s claims that the Houthis threaten international shipping routes “false and misleading.”

The airstrikes come a few days after the Houthis said they would resume attacks on Israeli vessels sailing off Yemen in response to Israel’s latest blockade on Gaza. They described the warning as affecting the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Arabian Sea.

There have been no Houthi attacks reported since then.

Earlier this month, Israel halted all aid coming into Gaza and warned of “additional consequences” for Hamas if their fragile ceasefire in the war isn’t extended as negotiations continue over starting a second phase.

The Houthis had targeted over 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two vessels and killing four sailors, during their campaign targeting military and civilian ships between the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in late 2023 and January of this year, when this ceasefire in Gaza took effect.

The attacks raised the Houthis’ profile as they faced economic and other problems at home amid Yemen’s decade-long stalemated war that’s torn apart the Arab world’s poorest nation.

The Houthi media office said the U.S. strikes hit a residential neighborhood in Sanaa’s northern district of Shouab. Residents said at least four airstrikes rocked the Eastern Geraf neighborhood there, terrifying women and children.

“The explosions were very strong,” said Abdallah al-Alffi. “It was like an earthquake.”

The Eastern Geraf is home to Houthi-held military facilities and a headquarters for the rebels’ political bureau, located in a densely populated area.

The Houthis reported fresh strikes on the southwestern Dhamar province late Saturday. They said the strikes hit the outskirts of the provincial capital, also named Dhamar, and the district of Abs.

The United States, Israel and Britain have previously hit Houthi-held areas in Yemen. Israel’s military declined to comment.

However, Saturday’s operation was conducted solely by the U.S., according to a U.S. official. It was the first strike on the Yemen-based Houthis under the second Trump administration.

Such broad-based missile strikes against the Houthis were carried out multiple times by the Biden administration in response to frequent attacks by the Houthis against commercial and military vessels in the region.

The USS Harry S. Truman carrier strike group, which includes the carrier, three Navy destroyers and one cruiser, are in the Red Sea and were part of Saturday’s mission. The USS Georgia cruise missile submarine has also been operating in the region.

Trump announced the strikes as he spent the day at his Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida.

“These relentless assaults have cost the U.S. and World Economy many BILLIONS of Dollars while, at the same time, putting innocent lives at risk,” Trump said.

___

Baldor reported from Washington and Magdy reported from Cairo. AP White House Correspondent Zeke Miller and AP writer Tara Copp in Washington contributed to this report.

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The Dictatorship

What to know about El Salvador’s mega-prison after Trump sent hundreds of immigrants there

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What to know about El Salvador’s mega-prison after Trump sent hundreds of immigrants there

By German Marcos and Regina Garcia Cano

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — The crown jewel of El Salvador’s aggressive anti-crime strategy — a mega-prison where visitation, recreation and education are not allowed — became the latest tool in U.S. President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration on Sunday, when hundreds of immigrants facing deportation were transferred there.

The arrival of the immigrants, alleged by the U.S. to be members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, took place under an agreement for which the Trump administration will pay the government of President Nayib Bukele $6 million for one year of services.

Bukele has made the Central American country’s stark, harsh prisons a trademark of his fight against crime. In 2023, he opened the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, where the immigrants were sent over the weekend even as a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring their deportations under an 18th century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members.

What is the CECOT?

Bukele ordered the mega-prison built as he began his campaign against El Salvador’s gangs in March 2022. It opened a year later in the town of Tecoluca, about 72 kilometers (45 miles) east of the capital.

The facility has eight sprawling pavilions and can hold up to 40,000 inmates. Each cell can fit 65 to 70 prisoners.

CECOT prisoners do not receive visits and are never allowed outdoors. The prison does not offer workshops or educational programs to prepare them to return to society after their sentences.

In this photo provided by El Salvador's presidential press office, a prison guard transfers deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (El Salvador presidential press office via AP)

In this photo provided by El Salvador’s presidential press office, a prison guard transfers deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (El Salvador presidential press office via AP)

Occasionally, prisoners who have gained a level of trust from prison officials give motivational talks. Prisoners sit in rows in the corridor outside their cells for the talks or are led through exercise regimens under the supervision of guards.

Bukele’s justice minister has said that those held at CECOT would never return to their communities.

The prison’s dining halls, break rooms, gym and board games are for guards.

How many prisoners does El Salvador hold?

The government doesn’t regularly update the figure, but the human rights organization Cristosal reported that in March 2024 El Salvador had 110,000 people behind bars, including those sentenced to prison and those still awaiting trial. That’s more than double the 36,000 inmates that the government reported in April 2021, a year before Bukele ramped up his fight against crime.

Cristosal and other advocates have accused authorities of human rights violations.

Cristosal reported last year that at least 261 people had died in El Salvador’s prisons during the gang crackdown. The group and others have cited cases of abuse, torture and lack of medical attention.

In slickly produced videos, the government has shown CECOT prisoners in boxer shorts marching into common areas and made to sit nearly atop each other. Cells lack enough bunks for everyone.

Why were immigrants sent to CECOT?

The migrants were deported after Trump’s declaration of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has been used only three times in U.S. history.

The law requires a president to declare the U.S. is at war, giving him extraordinary powers to detain or remove foreigners who otherwise would have protections under immigration or criminal laws. Trump claimed the Tren de Aragua gang was invading the U.S. in invoking the wartime authority.

Aragua Train originated in an infamously lawless prison in Venezuela and accompanied an exodus of millions of Venezuelans, the overwhelming majority of whom were seeking better living conditions after their nation’s economy came undone last decade.

The Trump administration has not identified the migrants deported, provided any evidence they are in fact members of Tren de Aragua or that they committed any crimes in the U.S.

Video released by El Salvador’s government Sunday showed men exiting airplanes into an airport tarmac lined by officers in riot gear. The men, who had their hands and ankles shackled, struggled to walk as officers pushed their heads down to have them bend at the waist.

The video also showed the men being transported to CECOT in a large convoy of buses guarded by police and military vehicles and at least one helicopter. The men were shown kneeling on the ground as their heads were shaved before they changed into the prison’s all-white uniform – knee-length shorts, T-shirt, socks and rubber clogs – and placed in cells.

——

Garcia Cano reported from Caracas, Venezuela.

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Trump scraps key Biden-era policy that increased minimum wage for federal contractors

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Trump scraps key Biden-era policy that increased minimum wage for federal contractors

Republican leaders understand that the GOP has earned a reputation for championing the interests of the wealthy, but they occasionally make the case that the party has changed.

Around this time four years ago, for example, then-House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy declared“The uniqueness of this party today is we’re the workers party.” Around the same time, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas wrote online“The Republican Party is not the party of the country clubs, it’s the party of hardworking, blue-collar men and women.”

It’s difficult to say with confidence whether GOP leaders ever believed their own rhetoric when it came to workers’ interests, but Donald Trump continues to take steps that leave little doubt that the contemporary Republican Party is most certainly not “the workers party.” Bloomberg Law reported:

President Donald Trump scrapped Biden-era executive orders that raised the minimum wage for federal contractors to $15 and drove federal infrastructure investments toward companies that agree to union neutrality. … In addition to union neutrality, the now canceled EO 14126 favored companies that offer equitable compensation practices and participate in registered apprenticeships.

In case anyone needs a refresher, it was in early 2014 when Barack Obama raised the minimum wage for federal contractors to $10.10 an hour. As we discussed at the timebecause government contracts can be lucrative, and so many private enterprises want federal work, the Democratic president, with a stroke of a pen, gave a raise to a whole lot of employees. The shift also sent a message to the private sector that to compete in the labor force, businesses should follow suit.

Republicans were less than pleased but faced a messaging challenge: Since most Americans support a higher minimum wage, the GOP didn’t want to be seen attacking the Democrat for doing something popular. As an alternative, Republicans pretended to be outraged that Obama advanced one of his goals by way of an executive order.

Republican Rep. Randy Weber of Texas, for example, called Obama a “Socialistic dictator” and the “Kommandant-In-Chef.” (I assume he meant “chief.”) Then-House Speaker John Boehner suggested the minimum-wage hike for contractors was unconstitutional. Ted Cruz was so incensed that he wrote and on-ed condemning the “imperial presidency of Barack Obama.”

Undeterred, Biden built on the policy in 2021, raising the wage for federal contractors to $15, amid a series of related efforts to use White House power to encourage corporations that do business with the government to adopt pro-labor policies.

Trump has now used his power to undo all of these Biden-era steps.

The president’s move comes four months after he appeared on NBC News’ “Meet the “Press” and faced a question about the federal minimum wage. Host Kristen Welker reminded the Republican that the federal minimum wage has been $7.25 for more than 15 years and asked whether he was prepared to raise it.

“It’s a very low number,” Trump concededreferring to the status quo. “I will agree, it’s a very low number.”

As the exchange continued, however, Trump, who has spent years offering confusing and contradictory positions on the issue, declared that he believes having a federal minimum wage doesn’t “work.”

Evidently, he apparently believes raising the minimum wage for federal contractors doesn’t work, either.

Steve legs

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

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On Russia, Trump rejects public attitudes and takes new Kremlin-aligned steps

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On Russia, Trump rejects public attitudes and takes new Kremlin-aligned steps

The latest national NBC News poll asked American voters which country has their sympathies in the Russian/Ukrainian war, and the results weren’t close: Only 2% of Americans sided with Vladmir Putin’s regime, while 61% chose U.S. allies Kyiv. The same poll, however, asked about Donald Trump’s sympathies, and a 49% plurality said they believe the Republican president is sympathetic to Moscow.

Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates, who conducted the survey along with a GOP colleague, said, “I cannot recall a moment in history when American public opinion and voters’ views of a president, as to which country they are more aligned with, have been more in conflict with each other.”

There is no reason to see the poll as an outlier. The latest national survey from Quinnipiac University found that a majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the war and believe he hasn’t been tough enough on Putin. The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll also found that more than half of Americans agreed that the president is “too closely aligned” with Russia. Similarly, the latest CNN poll found that a majority of Americans disapprove of the Republican’s policies toward Russia and Ukraine, and 50% said his approach to the war is bad for the United States. (For more information on the polls’ methodologies and margins of error, click on any of the above links.)

With data like this, it’s tempting to think the American president, who’s been a little too eager of late to align his administration with Moscowmight consider a change in direction. He’s not. On the contrary, Trump continues to double and triple down on his unpopular approach.

During his unhinged remarks at the Justice Department late last week, for example, the president falsely suggested that Ukraine tried to “pick on” Russia. The next day, for reasons that weren’t altogether clear, Trump published a 150-word item to his social media platform, insisting that Putin was punctual for his meeting with “my Highly Respected Ambassador and Special Envoy, Steve Witkoff” — who is not actually an ambassador.

Around the same time, NBC News published this striking report:

President Donald Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia was excluded from high-level talks on ending the war after the Kremlin said it didn’t want him there, a U.S. administration official and a Russian official told NBC News. Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg was conspicuously absent from two recent summits in Saudi Arabia — one with Russian officials and the other with Ukrainians — even though the talks come under his remit.

During the presidential transition process, Trump announced that the retired general would oversee the administration’s policy toward the war, but the NBC News report, published late last week, said Moscow made it clear behind the scenes that it did not approve of Kellogg.

The next day, Trump announced that Kellogg would now have a new jobserving as his special envoy to Ukraine. It led reporter Laura Rozen to note that it “looks like Trump let Russia veto one of his negotiators.”

In case that weren’t quite enough, as this week got underway, The New York Times reported that the Trump administration has informed our longtime European allies that the United States is withdrawing from the International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine — a “multinational group created to investigate leaders responsible for the invasion of Ukraine.”

The Trump administration “is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declared two weeks ago. “This largely aligns with our vision.”

The latest polling suggests this is not what the American mainstream wants. The American president doesn’t seem to care.

Steve legs

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

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