US Pulls Last Aircraft Carrier Out of East Asia/Pacific, Moves It to Strait of Hormuz
The USS George Washington departed to the Strait of Hormuz after a supposedly routine visit to Da Nang, the fourth most populous city in Vietnam. Da Nang was the first place that US troops entered to declare war against the Vietnamese people and acted as a major base of operations for Americans (including as an Agent Orange storage area and a torture facility to the Vietnamese people) during the US imperialist invasion and devastation of Vietnam. The Navy cited this visit to Da Nang as part of a celebration of the US’s 250th anniversary, but the people of Vietnam intimately know of the US empire’s 250 years of imperialism and certainly do not celebrate it. So too do the people of Iran, who continue to suffer under the yoke of US imperialism. As recently as the end of July, US aerial bombings have maimed and murdered the people of Iran.
The USS George Washington, normally deployed to Yokosuka, Japan, a city in the Greater Tokyo Metropolitan area, is set to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln, which has been deployed for nearly nine months. While the USS Abraham Lincoln has its own weapons targeted on the region and almost certainly has deployed weapons that caused untold death and destruction upon the people of Iran, the USS George Washington has extremely deadly long-range capabilities.
Sources:
https://www.c7f.navy.mil/About-Us/Facts-Sheet/
Operations Metro Surge
A bombshell report on DHS’ operations during Operation Metro Surge came to light this Thursday in the midst of legal battles over the trial of the Minnesota 15. A 26-page motion for discovery by defense attorney Kevin Riach exposed an extensive web of surveillance across the entire Twin Cities dubbed “Operation Puppet Master” and later “Project Whipple Shield” by the Department of Homeland Security. DHS and other agencies have declined to comment on any connection to current operations.
According to the motion, “Operation Puppet Master” began at the beginning of Metro Surge in January of 2026. It was established with the goal of targeting and unearthing a “network supporting violent opportunists and agitators.” In actuality, the scheme took aim at a huge swath of mainstream left organizations, unions, and regular community organizers. Records of spying operations through the use of undercover agents, infiltration of signal chats, and extensive investigation in financial records are detailed throughout the document with explicit mention of organizations such as the Sunrise Movement as targets. In at least one documented incident, agents attempted to push community members towards more escalatory action likely to result in arrests.
Legal experts have pointed to a number of suspicious practices characterizing this investigation. Notably, DHS almost exclusively used administrative subpoenas in acquiring records. This allowed them to bypass judicial authorization and any standard of criminality for such requests.
The motion makes it clear that the groundwork for this operation and Metro Surge in general have been layed by the directive NSPM-7 from late 2025 and surrounding executive orders. NSPM-7 not only allows for, but makes a strategic mandate, the categorization of left-wing movements as domestic terrorism. It takes “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; (…) extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality,” as key examples to be stamped out. This degree of repressions shows no sign of being a one-off and is likely representative of a wider and deeper shift into more aggressive and heavy-handed counter-insurgency tactics under the Trump administration.
Sources:
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416/gov.uscourts.mnd.234416.212.0_2.pdf
https://theintercept.com/2026/08/15/undercover-ice-agents-minneapolis-sunrise-movement/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/13/us-government-spied-anti-ice-protesters
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/6030064-dhs-secretly-monitored-minneapolis-protesters/
Over 100 Organizations Demand Marco Rubio Secure Sama Safi’s Release from Israeli Military Prison
20 year-old Sama Safi, a US citizen studying at Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank, has been held in Israeli detention without charges for almost three months. Suffering from severe and complex chronic health issues, over 100 organizations have signed a letter directed to to Secretary of State Marco Rubio demanding he secure Safi’s immediate release, as per the State Department’s obligation to the safety of US citizens abroad.
On June 2, Israeli forces broke into Safi’s family’s home in the West Bank, abducting her at 3 am. Shackled and blindfolded, Safi was “driven around for several hours,” receiving no food or water for the first 24 hours of her illegal detention, according to a statement included in the signed letter. She was one of four women taken that night, all being accused of “promoting hostile terrorist activity and additional terrorist-related activities,” according to a spokesperson of the Israeli military.
The accusations stem from alleged involvement with a student group Qutub, which Israel claims is connected with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). According to Safi’s lawyer, Sama has denied involvement with the student group, and further emphasized that the group is not an illegal organization. It is suspected that the Israeli military forcibly extorted information from other unjustly arrested Palestinian students, resulting in the arrest and arbitrary detention of Sama and more.
Sama suffers from a chronic autoinflammatory disease, said to “cause debilitating fevers and pain” which had left her bedridden up until she began daily medication and quarterly injections which require her to travel abroad for said treatment. She was released from Israeli detention to receive medical care, only to be brought back to the extreme and inhumane conditions of Israeli prisons.
While Safi was initially detained in the West Bank, she was transferred to the Damon Israeli military prison, considered a war crime and direct violation of Article 147 of the Geneva Convention, which bans “unlawful transfer, deportation, or confinement of protected persons from an occupied territory to the territory of the occupy power.”
Organizations like the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU), Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the Center for Constitutional Rights have signed onto the letter.
Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/13/palestinian-held-sama-safi-israeli-military
Behind Enemy Lines 