by Ja'han Jones | May 30, 2026 | Opinion
It seems some African nations have grown tired of the Trump administration treating them like lab rats.
The Trump regime’s interests in African nations over the past year seem to have been limited to letting its allies plunder resources from those countries or using them as a dumping ground for deportees targeted by the president’s racist anti-immigrant crackdown. This posture from Trump and company, in which the U.S. attempts to impose its will on African nations, differs from the Biden administration’s approach, which sought to reset diplomatic ties by taking a less paternalistic, less exploitative stance.
And we’re starting to see what it looks like when African nations bristle at the type of relationship Trump is trying to foster. The latest example came on Friday with a Kenyan court’s decision to block a U.S. plan to send Americans there to quarantine when they pose an Ebola risk.
The Washington Post reported:
A Kenyan court Friday suspended a Trump administration plan to establish a makeshift field hospital in Kenya to quarantine and treat Americans exposed to or infected with Ebola.
The court, citing a threat to life, issued its ruling on the day U.S. officials said the facility would begin operating. It has capacity for up to 50 patients potentially exposed during the growing Ebola outbreak, which is centered in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The article continued:
Authorities say suspected Ebola cases have passed 1,000, with nearly 250 suspected deaths. The court ruling, which is temporary pending fuller consideration of the case June 2, nonetheless halted a key part of the strategy from President Donald Trump’s administration for handling Americans exposed to Ebola overseas.
As the Post explained,
by Ja'han Jones | May 30, 2026 | Opinion
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is seeking details on the new acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, David Venturella, amid concern about his ties to the private prison industry.
I recently wrote about Venturella’s ties to Geo Group, a prison contractor that has raked in record revenue thanks to the Trump administration’s racist anti-immigrant agenda — last year, its executives boasted to investors about all the money they stood to make.
Venturella served as a senior executive at the company, and his hiring comes amid questions about President Donald Trump and members of his regime potentially profiting from the immigration crackdown.
Warren sent a letter to Venturella on Wednesday with a request for information that could help dispel such worries. The letter reads, in part:
You worked at the GEO Group, the largest private prison contractor operating immigrant detention facilities across the U.S., for over a decade prior to joining ICE; that history, and your reported use of DHS personnel and resources for personal or political favors, raise serious concerns about your ability to effectively serve as ICE’s leader, especially at a time when the Trump Administration’s mass deportation agenda is systematically violating fundamental human rights.
Warren’s letter cites numerous news reports about Venturella, including one from The Washington Post that referred to him as the “former private prison exec behind ICE’s immigrant detention surge.”
The senator wrote that she wants assurances that Venturella will recuse himself from “all matters that could directly or indirectly benefit GEO Group.” She also requested that he make ethics-related information public.
Warren’s letter also seeks information on Venturella’s reported involvement in helping facilitate ICE’s detention of Trump ally Paolo Zampolli’s ex-wife
by Tara C. Smith | May 30, 2026 | Opinion
News recently broke that the United States is building a quarantine and treatment center in Kenya to send U.S. healthcare workers to, rather than bring them back to the U.S. treatment centers that have been used successfully in prior outbreaks. The U.S. government also issued travel bans to deny entry to individuals who were recently in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda or South Sudan despite objections from the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization that travel bans are an ineffective response.
“We cannot and will not allow any cases of Ebola to enter the United States,” affirmed Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
This makes no sense.
The current Ebola outbreak — more specifically, the Bundibugyo species of the virus — is a callback to the 2013-2016 epidemic in West Africa. Both outbreaks were unexpected, though in different ways. Prior to 2013, the affected West African countries (Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia) had never seen an Ebola outbreak. By the time the epidemic came to global attention, the virus had been circulating for months.
Ebola is a deadly infection, but not a highly contagious one.
Like the West African outbreak, recognition of the current epidemic in the Congo was delayed at least 3 weeks (we are still unsure when the first case occurred). It also spread unrecognized into a neighboring country — in this case, Uganda. While the Congo is a veteran of 16 prior Ebola outbreaks and is generally very quick to recognize them, the uncommon Bundibugyo virus has only surfaced twice before — in the Congo in 2012 and in Uganda in 2007. The location of the outbreak was
by Duncan Levin | May 29, 2026 | Opinion
The U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of Illinois has been in the news a lot lately — and for some disturbing reasons.
The Justice Department has reportedly opened an inquiry into a Chicago-based nonprofit backed by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and is considering possible charges of money laundering. According to The New York Times, the inquiry is focused, at least for now, on Hoffman’s nonprofit, American Future Republic, which helped fund certain legal expenses in E. Jean Carroll’s civil cases against President Donald Trump. The U.S. attorney’s office has said it has not opened a criminal investigation into Carroll, the New York writer who accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in the 1990s, although the reporting makes clear that prosecutors are examining the accuracy of statements made during the civil litigation about outside funding.
Play
‘The goal here is to silence them’: Ex-federal prosecutor blasts DOJ’s targeting of Trump accuser
May 28, 2026 / 04:24
At this point, even if Carroll is not formally the subject of the investigation, the criminal inquiry looks less like an ordinary money-laundering or perjury investigation than an effort to use federal prosecutorial power to revisit a credibility fight Trump already lost in court.
The lead prosecutor for these investigations is Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros. His office made headlines recently over its prosecution of protesters who came to be known as the “Broadview Six.” The cases collapsed amid extraordinary revelations about prosecutors’ conduct before the grand jury.
At this point, even if Carroll is not formally the subject of the investigation, the criminal inquiry looks less like an ordinary money-laundering or perjury investigation than an effort to use
by Ja'han Jones | May 29, 2026 | Opinion
Confusion seems to be the prevailing sentiment among the raft of artists who have vehemently denied they’ll be performing at Donald Trump’s so-called Great American State Fair in June, the MAGA-fueled event he and his allies are planning in Washington, D.C., pegged to America’s 250th anniversary.
Artists like singer Martina McBride, rocker Bret Michaels and the crooning Commodores all said they had initially understood that they would be performing at a bipartisan event and not what is effectively a MAGA-branded publicity stunt.
Such claims may be hard to believe in some cases. But it is true that Trump and his allies are attempting to hijack the nation’s anniversary, sowing confusion about who is behind various events in the process.
Congress authorized funding a decade ago for an official anniversary celebration, “America250,” but as I have referenced in previous blogs, Trump supporters have stood up a separate, Trump-allied organization called Freedom 250 to host its own events. Among these are events like the Christian nationalist “revival” hosted on the national mall and the UFC fight on the White House lawn on the president’s birthday.
Freedom 250, meanwhile, is being investigated by Congressional Democrats, who have warned about its potential to facilitate corporate payments in exchange for access to the Trump administration.
It’s not hard to see how an artist could make the mistake of thinking they would agreed to perform at an America250 event, when in actuality they had been invited to perform at a Trump-centered alternative. The Wall Street Journal reported in April about some of this confusion at the corporate level:
Representatives from the Trump-aligned group have in recent months called a bevy of major companies,
by Zeeshan Aleem | May 29, 2026 | Opinion
The new Democratic policy group Project 2029 sees itself as an answer to Project 2025 — the radical MAGA policy blueprint President Donald Trump has embraced during his second term to transform the government. But Project 2029’s shockingly timid first policy roll out this week suggests the group isn’t up to fulfilling its own mandate.
The people behind Project 2029 exclusively releasing their initial set of proposals to The Bulwark in and of itself signals moderation: The Bulwark, home of many Never Trump Republicans, is a conservative sector of the Democratic coalition. The group’s apparent view of The Bulwark as friendly turf suggests its outlook on social change is going to be restrained.
It’s hard to imagine these proposals animating large groups of voters.
The preview Project 2029 shared with The Bulwark includes four proposals that are described in broad terms and allude to policy documents that apparently have yet to be released. Some main points include:
Breaking up utility monopolies: “Our proposal outlines how the next President should break these monopolies open, letting competition drive down bills, speed up delivery, and unleash a new wave of cleaner, cheaper energy for families and businesses.”
Childcare changes: “Our proposal outlines how the next President can ensure that every family has the time, financial support, and high-quality care options they want, giving parents back the power of choice on how to support their young children.”
Protecting kids from the internet: “Our proposal would protect children from the most harmful features of social media and AI, give parents stronger tools, and dismantle the surveillance advertising model that drives much of the harm.”
Cutting down on “The Annoyance Economy”: Tackling the “enormous
