Saturday Covfefe: Stranger Things Have Happened

Election threats. Secret strikes. Political surveillance, and the teenagers who pushed back.

Saturday, August 15, 2026

If there were ever any doubt that Trump does not understand the sacrifices military service demands, just remember the USS Abraham Lincoln.

Bring them home.

And apparently Trump now thinks he can declare parts of the world American territory. He says the Strait of Hormuz is next. Because international sovereignty works on dibs now. SMDH. (Translation for those of us raised on complete sentences: shaking my damn head.)

Now, let’s get into it.

1. The National Security Cloak Is Coming for the Midterms

I have long warned that “national security” is this administration’s favorite cloak, the phrase it reaches for when it wants extraordinary power with minimal scrutiny. Now Trump’s allies are saying the quiet part out loud.

During a Newsmax interview, MAGA personality Wayne Allyn Root suggested Trump declare a national security emergency to impose new voting restrictions before the midterms. Trump could have rejected the idea. Instead, he replied: "Stranger things have happened, okay? I’ll leave it at that."

A classic Trump threat, left hanging in the air. The president does not control federal elections. The Constitution gives states primary responsibility for administering them and Congress the power to regulate them. An emergency declaration cannot erase that, and any attempted takeover would face immediate legal challenges, but legality is only part of the danger.

This is how the national security cloak works: manufacture an emergency, call it "security" and dare anyone to intervene. Protesters become "domestic terrorists." Migration becomes an "invasion." A trade deficit becomes a "national emergency." Falling crime in Washington justifies troops in the streets. Now they are testing that language on our elections.

Trump just told us what he may do. This time, let’s not pretend we weren’t warned.

🗳️ Trump Is Hinting at an Election Emergency (The New Republic)

2. Bombing Fishing Boats Near the Galápagos…

This story reads like a spy thriller. Unfortunately, the people and the explosions are real.

Three Ecuadorian fishing boats were attacked near the Galápagos Islands this year. The Fiorella disappeared in January with eight crew members still missing. Two others were struck by explosive drones in March. Survivors say armed men then hooded and handcuffed them, transported them to El Salvador and eventually sent them home without charges or explanation.

The Washington Post reports that the attacks were part of a covert CIA program authorized by President Trump. Flight data shows a surveillance-equipped American jet repeatedly flying from El Salvador toward the boats before the strikes. It operated from Ilopango, the same airport used for covert U.S.-backed operations in Central America during the 1980s. This is separate from the Pentagon’s campaign of bombing suspected drug boats, which has killed 221 people without meaningfully slowing the cocaine trade, as I recently wrote. No evidence has been publicly released tying these Ecuadorian crews to trafficking. The survivors say they were fishing. If this was a legitimate counternarcotics operation, where is the evidence? If it wasn’t, what exactly did our government do?

🛥️ Now the CIA Is Reportedly Bombing Fishing Boats, Too (WaPo)

3. Federal Agents Killed Him, DHS Investigated the Protesters

Four days after federal agents fatally shot Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old VA nurse who was filming Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) opened an investigation. The target of that DHS inquiry was not the conduct of the agents who killed him. It was labor unions, climate activists, socialist groups and ordinary residents protesting the crackdown. Newly released documents reveal that DHS launched a sprawling surveillance effort called Operation Puppet Master. Undercover agents infiltrated Signal chats and attended meetings in churches, libraries and parks. They recorded names, political opinions and license plates. Investigators obtained three years of financial records from the Sunrise Movement and the Communications Workers of America. They scrutinized wire transfers from the nation’s largest health care workers union as possible "domestic terrorist financing."

Prosecutors later showed a grand jury a slide claiming that 18 organizations, including the AFL-CIO, teachers’ unions, the Democratic Socialists of America and even a Minneapolis bicycle shop, were connected to a conspiracy to obstruct immigration officers. Fifteen individuals were eventually charged with interfering with federal agents, and the indictment describes some allegedly violent or obstructive acts. None of the organizations swept into the investigation has been charged with a crime. A significant portion of the documented activity involved constitutionally protected speech discussing protests, monitoring ICE vehicles, and criticizing the administration. This wasn’t investigators following evidence. It was the government choosing political opponents, then working backward to find a crime. This is incredibly alarming.

They called it Operation Puppet Master. For once, the name tells you everything.

🕵️ DHS Put Political Dissent Under Surveillance (NY Times)

4. The Name That Won’t Stay Gone

Remember when we stayed up late watching Donald Trump’s name finally come off the Kennedy Center? Well, someone kept the ladder.

This week, the Trump-aligned Kennedy Center board voted, again, to put his name on the building. This time, the proposed inscription reads: "The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump."

Subtle.

A federal judge blocked the board’s previous attempt to rename the center and ordered Trump’s name removed in June. So rather than accept the ruling, the board has apparently returned with a thesaurus and a workaround. It also voted to close the main building for two years for renovations, shifting some performances elsewhere. However, some have said the shutdown is less about construction and more about concealing declining ticket sales after Trump took the place over. The judge who blocked the earlier closure plan would still need to approve this one. Apparently we’re doing this ridiculous performance again, only this time the show is happening outside of the theater.

🎭 Trump’s Name Is Going Back on the Kennedy Center, Again (Politico)

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5. The Teenagers Did Their Homework and the Adults Panicked

Given what is happening to journalism and the First Amendment across this country, I want you to read this story. What happens to the next generation of journalists matters just as much as what is happening in today’s newsrooms.

Ben Mueller, a California high school senior, was assigned to tell a news story through an Instagram slideshow for his journalism class. He chose the Epstein files. Mueller spent five hours searching the Justice Department’s database for references to his Marin County community. He found thousands, including a 2013 email associated with a woman connected to a French modeling agency. He accurately summarized the public document in a post for his school newspaper, The Redwood Bark. After the post went viral, the woman threatened to sue the school district for defamation. Worried about legal costs, the superintendent demanded that the students remove her name or delete the slide. So the teenagers spent lunch consulting lawyers and then showed administrators the document and cited California law protecting student journalists from censorship. The post went back up and no lawsuit followed.

The Student Press Law Center says requests for legal help from school newspapers have risen 42 percent in two years as students report on immigration, Gaza, campus protests and the Epstein files. This is how censorship often works: not with a government order, but with enough pressure to make people silence themselves. These teenagers refused.

📰 A Teen Reporter, the Epstein Files and a Legal Threat (Wired)

🌠 ONE THING FOR YOUR SOUL

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope may have discovered an entirely new cosmic object: a “black hole star.” Seen as it existed 660 million years after the Big Bang, it is the size of our solar system and produces 100 billion times more energy than any known star. Except, it’s not a star! It may actually be a black hole wrapped in gas so dense that the whole structure glows. Scientists believe objects like this could have helped shape galaxies, stars, planets, and eventually, life.

There is something comforting in knowing the universe can still surprise us. A light we never knew existed has traveled billions of years to reach us, and we are finally able to see it.

If Earth felt especially heavy this week, here’s your reminder to look up. Even something as dark as a black hole can surprise us with light. Take that with you.

🌌 Meet the Black Hole Star (The Guardian)

And on that bright note, see you next time,

Olivia