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A U.S. service member's wife had a blunt response on Friday for President Donald Trump after he dismissed reports of poor conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln, even as families expressed serious concerns about their loved ones.CNN anchor Jake Tapper spoke with the unnamed woman, who shared that she could not identify herself over concerns for her husband's safety and career. Tapper asked what her reaction was to Trump's remarks after the president said he did not think the deployment was "long enough." Nearly 5,000 sailors and Marines have been deployed on the warship for nine months in the Arabian Sea during the Iran war."Oh my God! I don't think the man thinks before he talks," she said. "I was really hoping that at some point there would be a redemption. Try to redeem yourself at least a little bit with everything that you do and everything that you say. Have some empathy. Take some accountability for what's going on with your military, your ships, and your war. It's infuriating." She slammed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Trump for their comments dismissing the reports of deteriorating conditions and low morale among the troops."What the president is saying today, essentially saying that families are lying and service members are lying, even though the proof is right here on my phone, it is not fabricated," she said. "Nobody is lying."She criticized the Trump administration for not showing sympathy for service members "that they claim to scream and shout that they support when it's politically sound for them to use, 'support our troops, support our troops' until our troops need support. And now suddenly everyone's lying. And it's a fabrication and it's a misrepresentation.""I would so badly love to plaster my face and blow the whistle so loud on social media with my name and be like, 'this is real. We are real people. Those are real people on that ship. This is actually happening.' But unfortunately, I have to protect my husband's career."

Win is significant for region’s premier, Doug Ford, who blames protected zones for city’s traffic illsThe Ontario government is now free to rip out Toronto’s bike lanes on its busiest streets after the region’s top court ruled in favour of the province on Friday, overturning a lower court’s decision that decreed removal would violate constitutional rights.The win is significant for Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, and his government, who have long railed against Toronto’s bike lanes, blaming the protected zones for the city’s traffic ills. Continue reading...

President Donald Trump said he would declare the Strait of Hormuz as a United States territory during a speech on Friday.Trump was speaking at the David S. Mack Center for Training and Intelligence in Garden City, New York, where he was touting his crackdown on crime and campaigning at a rally with Republican gubernatorial candidate and Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman.He claimed Iran was "being badly defeated." "Pretty soon I'll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States," Trump said. Trump says that after Iran is defeated he’s going to declare the Strait of Hormuz a territory of the United States pic.twitter.com/zmZsqtY3VS— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 14, 2026

As concerns mounted Friday over poor conditions onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, families of military service members on another Navy ship were pleading for help.A new report from independent journalist Aaron Parnas detailed the troubling conditions and declining morale shared by sailors' families, including how service members on the USS George H.W. Bush were facing "virtually no food, water, or soap," The Daily Beast reported.A loved one of two U.S. sailors told Parnas via text how the situation was worsening for sailors on the warship in the Arabian Sea as the Iran war now drags on for more than five months."They've been out at sea for 146 days with no end in sight," the unnamed family member said. They learned about the conditions when her sister-in-law left the ship for a family emergency. "Morale is low, and everyone is miserable. It's heartbreaking."The USS Bush left Norfolk, Virginia, in March, The Beast reported.The reports onboard follow growing frustration about the USS Abraham Lincoln's roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines, who are nine months into a deployment that was supposed to end in May, with no return date announced.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has pushed back on the accounts, telling reporters Thursday that the conditions had been "completely misrepresented," though he did not specify his concerns with the reporting. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who pressed Hegseth for answers, rejected that characterization as disrespectful to the sailors enduring the hardships.The Navy has acknowledged the war disrupted supply routes but said the Lincoln now has access to clean water and healthy meals. The carrier USS George Washington is being sent to relieve the ship, which has been at sea more than 240 days with only two port calls.

President Donald Trump's touted Freedom Fuel gas-station network faces fresh scrutiny after a former State Department official questioned possible links to Venezuela.During an episode of Court of History, former State Department expert on international crime Jonathan Winer suggested Freedom Fuel may be tied to Venezuela's opaque oil revenue and selling cheaper gas through an arrangement that's "literally unprecedented in American history."Freedom Fuel appeared around Philadelphia in late June with regular gas priced at $3.47 a gallon, which was roughly 50 cents under local prices and below estimated wholesale costs. The White House has promoted the chain as proof that Trump's energy agenda is working without explaining how the stations undercut every competitor."People can't mysteriously get fuel at a lower price and continue to offer that," Winer said. "You could, of course, do a very short promotion, but you basically can't do it."Since January, the administration has controlled Venezuelan oil revenue under what it called a custodianship and with almost no public accounting, Winer noted."It's all remarkably opaque," he said. "You would think we would know, but we don't."The Trump administration led an operation to remove former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro from power and detain him for drug trafficking charges. Winer noted that Trump boasted shortly after, "To the victor go the spoils, and these are the spoils," referring to Venezuelan oil. According to Winer, Trump even added, "We're getting billions."According to Winer, "Freedom Fuel is maintaining as much opacity as it can. It's not explaining anything." At the same time, "The White House is maintaining as much opacity as it can," except to say that Trump, his family, and their businesses have no financial stake in Freedom Fuel.However, Winer suggested that Freedom Fuel is "a patronage network which the United States is sponsoring." He called on Congress to subpoena records from the Treasury, State, and Energy departments."When you have governments that are being opaque rather than transparent, it's usually because there's something they want to hide," he warned.

CNN anchor Erin Burnett called the conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln "shocking" during a live broadcast on Thursday as new details emerged about dire troop morale.Burnett spoke with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who sits on the Armed Services Committee. The lawmaker wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asking for information about the troops on naval ships and pushed back on Hegseth's claims."Hegseth trying to characterize these powerful, credible reports as fake news is really a disservice and profoundly disrespectful to the sailors who are on the USS Abraham Lincoln and enduring these hardships," Blumenthal said. He explained how the lack of supplies, access to food, hot water, toothpaste and soap affects morale and increases stress, which he said contributed to a sailor reportedly going overboard."Anyone who's familiar with how an aircraft carrier operates knows that these jobs are highly stressful, requiring stamina as these fighter jets land on an area that looks like a postage stamp as they begin their descent," Blumenthal said. "And these sailors, whether they are on the deck or below, doing mechanics or at the surveillance systems, fending off possible attacks, are all under tremendous stress and doing work that can be highly dangerous if they are either distracted or demoralized. So it's a real strategic issue."Reports indicated Thursday that the USS Washington was on its way to replace or relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln, which has been at sea for a record 200-plus days without a port call — they haven't touched ground since the ship deployed from San Diego in November 2025.But that still doesn't solve the problem, Blumenthal explained."The USS Washington is being taken away from its forward position in the far east. So the endless war of impulse without strategy and exit plan is having a toll on our military readiness," he added.Burnett pointed out why this was problematic."When you hear this as an American and Americans rightly have pride in the greatest military in the world, but to hear that you have a premier military ship like this, right, a carrier where people aren't getting enough food, I think it's stunning," Burnett said. "It's hard to hear. And it's frankly shocking. And the conditions on the Lincoln appear to be in no small part because of the war with Iran." Blumenthal described another disturbing report: sailors have not been receiving their care packages."Anybody who's had sons or daughters in the military, I've had two, knows that a stale cookie can be worth its weight in gold," he said. "That kind of destructive impact to morale can have a ripple effect in the crew."

President Donald Trump might have a particular motivation for blowing a gasket about recent leaks like his catering cart escape to a secret plane.National security journalist Marcy "emptywheel" Wheeler raised her new theory in a post about the incident, which involved reporters and even some White House staff traveling in a decoy Air Force One flight without their knowledge during the threat of an assassination attempt — and it comes back to the fact that the only other significant people on the real flight were Trump aides Natalie Harp, Walt Nauta, and Dan Scavino."The details about who was in that catering cart are useful," she said, and not just because of the fact that "Trump took his comfort blonde, Harp, with him but not Stephen Miller (or any other Cabinet official, to include Marco Rubio)," wrote Wheeler. Rather, it could actually explain why Trump is so angry and scared about the leaks coming out of the White House.At the same time that The New York Times was hit with subpoenas for its journalistic sources about the Air Force One security issues, Wheeler explained."Susie Wiles and Kash Patel started seizing phones almost immediately. They also had to learn who was traveling with Trump — who was in that catering cart," Wheeler wrote.The simple fact is, said Wheeler, the nature of this leak means only a small handful of people could have tipped off the press — and most of those options aren't good for Trump. Those options include "One of those closest aides in the catering cart, or the junior people they brought with them; A very small group of the big-ego people left back as bait on Old Air Force One; Someone inside the Secret Service, involved in the ruse; [or] Turkish sources, who learned of the transfer."This means that for all Trump knows, one of his most trusted aides, like Harp, could have betrayed him. And it's vital to him to know whether that happened, Wheeler wrote."None of that justifies the abusive way Kash and Susie Wiles started chasing down sources," she concluded. "But it does explain it."

Man dies in Bas-Uele after travelling from Haut-Uele, as head of WHO says outbreak on track to be deadliest everThe Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has spread to a sixth province, officials have said, a day after the head of the World Health Organization said the outbreak was on track to surpass the deadliest in history, which killed at least 11,000 people more than a decade ago.The current outbreak has killed more than 2,100 people out of more than 4,500 cases, according to the latest government figures released on Tuesday. At the same point in the 2014-16 outbreak in west Africa, the previous most deadly outbreak, 755 cases had been recorded, according to WHO data. Continue reading...