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      The ex-CIA scientist brothers perfecting Halloween

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      Crowley Place is a sleepy street in the Waynewood area of south Alexandria, Virginia, a suburb 30 minutes from DC. The unassuming homes are well-tended, and it’s a quick walk to six different churches.But each year at Halloween the police shut down the street as thousands of visitors flock to the area. It’s all due to two ageing brothers who spent 40 years working together in secret at a laboratory in the CIA.For six weeks, no matter what was going on in the world, the Park brothers would take leave from the agency – using vacation, sick days and anything else they could think of – and construct an elaborate front-yard Halloween display, often using CIA-inspired technology.View image in fullscreenThe espionage careers of Jeff and Brian Park spanned the cold war, the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, Ronald Reagan’s war to topple the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Gulf war, and the global “war on terror”.Among the true insiders in the intelligence community, they were something of a legend. Among their specialties in the CIA office of technical services was to help to sabotage Russian systems. It is an obscure discipline even for intelligence services – sabotaging weapons can mean anything from secretly ruining rifle ammunition to hacking the guidance systems for an anti-aircraft missile.Still, their CIA work was just one part of their lives. Their obsession and delight was Halloween.It was three years ago that I first heard of the duo. My sources, veterans of the CIA, just called them the “Park brothers” – and spelled out their unusual expertise, claiming they didn’t remember their first names. It was difficult to track them down because Park was such a common name, but this year I used public records databases, keying in what their ages must be, and scanning through hundreds of names to find adjacent homes, and finally got their address.Outside the two adjacent homes on Crowley last week – the brothers own both – there was an absolute mess of black tents and graveyards, dotted with skeletons, robots, pirates and gory monsters. Lines overhead guide the flying witch and giant spider.Once I showed up on their lawn, the Park brothers were happy to talk.Jeff Park, 78, was pondering a jumble of electronics underneath a witch and near some skulls. He wore a brown T-shirt tucked neatly into tactical grey pants.View image in fullscreen“It takes six weeks to put this together and six weeks to take it apart,” he told me. He said he and his brother Brian, who strolled by lugging some equipment in a handcart, had started their display in 1977, and have been enlarging it ever since.“When I retired in ’14 I was the senior scientist at the CIA,” Jeff said, “so we got to do a lot of cool things. Things that you would go to jail for anywhere else.”Jeff confirmed what sources had said – that they used to sabotage Russian missiles. “We basically specialized in doing in – my brother and I, in our careers – doing in‬ weapon systems. Not just that, lots of other things too. But that was what we did. We did a lot of sabotage on‬ ‭weapon systems to stop the bad guys from doing stuff that we didn’t want them to do.”Brian Park, 75, has longer hair and a big smile. He said getting hired at the office of technical services in the 1970s was “like marrying into an extended Italian family”. Jeff added: “A mafiosa family.”But before talking about the CIA, they wanted to discuss Halloween. Jeff speaks fast, like an enthusiastic professor or Doc Brown of Back to the Future. He pointed out where the displays were going. “There will be Igor, there,” he pointed, “and the Gremlin and Ninja Turtle and ET and Yoda goes over there.” All of them, he says, are animatronic.The hi-tech displays are everywhere – all made by the Parks out of raw materials or discarded electronic devices, rescued parts, or remnants of some CIA experiments. There are elaborate cameras with radar and sonar sensors and a home-engineered 12-channel digital surround sound system threaded through the yard. There’s a giant cauldron – inspired by Disney’s Fantasia – with a computer and a smoke machine inside that emits different colors of smoke. Put your face too close and there’s a sensor to launch a surprise.A couple of graveyards, and one tombstone that flickers with a name changed at will.Jeff collects gargoyle statues; he’s got 210 of them so far. The gargoyles aren’t really part of the Halloween display, however, so they are just piled in the backyard for the winter.The living room of one Park home has what appears to be an old and worn-down La-Z-Boy chair, and the faded wall-to-wall carpet is littered with robots they built for bomb-disposal operations many years ago. On the walls are Christmas ornaments the Parks’ mother used to make.One house has all the electrical engineering supplies, with walls crammed with industrial shelving for resistors and capacitors and electrical connectors. There’s a massive specialized machine for making circuit boards.The other house has a metalworking shop, where the lathe is still littered with brass shavings.View image in fullscreenJeff has been setting up the animatronic gremlin they built. “We wrote software to modify his personality,” Jeff said, “as a function of your body movement. So you have a series of doppler shift radars that measure your body motion and it modifies how he reacts. So if you’re very calm and collected, he will look at you, OK? And then if you get hyper, then he pays no attention to you whatsoever.”Jeff said the exhibit is the most interactive. “Little kids, even four-year-old kids, know there is something special about him. Like, one year we had to cut his head open to repair something and they cried because they thought we were hurting him.”Close by is the alien rocket ship, with blue windows through which the alien is visible. It’s abandoned radio frequency testing equipment. “The throttle is from a B-1 bomber prototype,” Jeff said, pointing inside. It emits huge clouds of smoke for Halloween.In one back shed is a virtual reality device they first engineered in the 1970s for the CIA. Now it’s used to control a handmade, four-legged Star Wars Imperial Walker about five feet tall. “It’s got a 3,000-watt second strobe,” Jeff said. “You can feel it on the back of your neck at 20 feet.”The Parks joined the CIA in 1973. Brian Park was first, part of a fellowship program, and he convinced his bosses to meet with Jeff. Jeff insisted his first CIA interview – just to informally screen him – was at a downtown DC strip club that’s gone out of business.Brian said one early assignment was designing a specialized camera for a now well-known Russian spy for the CIA. “We had to build him a super tiny camera that would digitally store all this stuff so he wouldn’t have to put himself at risk. And so the first technology we used in the camera, the only way you could store digital, non-mechanically, was magnetic bubble memory.”It was the early days of digital memory. “We did something audacious. We shoveled four chips into one coil set and spent millions of dollars.”Whatever they did couldn’t protect the spy, whom the Russians executed in 1985. The story is the subject of a 2015 book and an upcoming movie starring Russell Crowe. And the technology they used – “bubble memory” – soon vanished from memory, obsolete.The CIA stories are never far away. Brian was lugging some Halloween display parts in a cleverly made cart, a one-handed wheelbarrow fashioned to distribute weight laterally.Jeff claimed the cart’s deck, fashioned out of a honeycombed aluminum material, used to reinforce the deck of racing boats he said were sent to the Contras, rigged with machine guns with massive recoil. He pointed at the cart. “That’s what’s left over!”Speedboats were indeed deployed to the region and provided to US proxies. Some speedboats were used in 1984 in CIA efforts to mine Nicaraguan harbors, an operation the international court of justice at The Hague declared illegal. It’s unclear if the specific boats the Park brothers refitted were used for that operation.Most of the year Brian and Jeff also have a railroad track made of aircraft-grade aluminum that encircles their property, over hills and bridges. It is for a miniature working steam engine that they handcrafted, with a seat so kids can ride it. Jeff said they built it using aircraft-grade aluminum. Unprompted, that launched him on a story about working on the track helped him as he engineered an early drone program in 1990, targeting Iraq.View image in fullscreenHe said the agency developed and deployed 25 of the unmanned aerial systems, with 7ft wingspans, prop driven gas engines – for reconnaissance, distributing propaganda leaflets, and finally for kamikaze bombing runs – and he boasted that earned him a promotion to the senior intelligence service level.It’s unusual to find people willing to chat about intelligence technology, even outdated gear. The CIA declined to comment on the Park brothers’ revelations.One of the things they’re proud of – “the coolest thing we ever did” – was an ambitious plan to destroy Scud missiles deployed by Russian client states.Earlier sources had referenced this when explaining the genius of the Park brothers, so hearing the details directly from them was like watching a movie where I’d only seen the trailer.View image in fullscreenBy engineering one key part, the brothers believed that deployed Scud missiles would make a U-turn and hit their own launching sites.“At the time the Soviet Union had come apart and so they were selling off to the black market a lot of the components that are used in Russian missiles,” Jeff said. “And so we basically went out, bought a bunch of them, brought them back to our contractors, modified them with my circuit.”In the end, the operation never moved forward. He said it was canceled because of resistance from the state department, worried about blowblack.Jeff boasted of another invention that he says he designed for US special operations. “It was the thing that probably put my name on the map. I had this crazy, wild-ass idea about how to build an infra-red beacon that you could see 10 miles away with night-vision glasses, and if you were two inches away from it you couldn’t see anything, using light-emitting diodes.”To convince the Navy Seals it worked, the brothers said, they invited the special operations forces to the Halloween festivities, and hid a beacon in a hedge a couple of streets over.After that, “for five years, I personally made all the night-vision beacons for the entire US military, including the Seals, Delta Forces, the Rangers. And that made me world famous.”View image in fullscreenJeff described one of their final plots – sabotaging Russian-made batteries, intercepted by the CIA, that Iran planned to install as an underground power back-up system for a nuclear facility.On this mission, the way he describes it, they went somewhat rogue. “Since it was two days after Christmas, all the bosses were on leave. And so there was just us in there. And so a whole bunch of us got together and we said, ‘Let’s screw the bad guys.’ So I trained a group of 10 people to drill holes randomly in the batteries, the diameter of a sewing machine needle.”The undetectable holes would slowly leak out the hydrogen and oxygen, to raise the internal resistance, and heat, of the battery to an explosive level.The brothers retired before they ever found out if the plan worked.View image in fullscreenCertainly their CIA, the one they talk about, is an agency where the notorious baggage and failures and scandal don’t play a leading role.This version of the CIA is not necessarily troubled by the old enhanced interrogation program, the “salt pit” death in Afghanistan, or “renditions”, or involvement in the mistaken shooting down of a plane carrying an American missionary family.Jeff said about two-thirds of all he did at the CIA never came to fruition, rejected by higher-ups or unsuccessful.But the Park brothers’ huge Halloween spectacle is at least a successful mission for them – where kids can be tricked and still be happy, where covert technology and deception actually work.View image in fullscreen More

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      Court to reconsider ruling that allowed Trump to send troops to Portland

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      The Trump administration remains barred from deploying the national guard in Portland, Oregon, following a federal appeals court ruling.The ninth circuit court of appeals agreed on Tuesday that it would rehear a case over the president’s authority with a broader court of 11 judges. The appeals court also vacated a ruling from a three-judge panel last week that sided with the Trump administration.The order is the latest development in a long legal saga over whether Donald Trump has the authority and justification to deploy national guard forces in Portland. The Oregon city has had about 200 federalized guard members in limbo since late September when Trump attempted to mobilize in response to months of protests there.The federal government has argued that federal officials working at the ICE facility in south Portland were under attack, while city and state officials argue that local officers have control of the situation.In defiance of Trump’s characterization of Portland as “war ravaged”, locals have been sharing videos of the city’s lush hiking trails and thriving food scene, and drawing up plans for Emergency Naked Bike Ride against “the militarization of our city”.The appeals court decision on Tuesday came after US district judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee in Portland, issued two temporary restraining orders this month – one that blocked the president from federalizing the Oregon national guard, and another stopping him from deploying any national guard troops in Oregon, after Trump tried to evade the first order by calling up troops from California.On Monday, the ninth circuit panel put the first ruling on hold – allowing Trump to take command of 200 Oregon national guard – but the second ruling remained in place, blocking Trump from actually deploying the troops.The Tuesday decision means that the issue will be heard “en banc” – with both rulings under consideration together – by a panel of 11 judges.“This ruling shows the truth matters and that the courts are working to hold this administration accountable. The constitution limits the president’s power, and Oregon’s communities cannot be treated as a training ground for unchecked federal authority,” said Oregon attorney general Dan Rayfield wrote in a statement.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The court is sending a clear message: the president cannot send the military into US cities unnecessarily. We will continue defending Oregon’s laws, values, and sovereignty as this case moves forward and our fight continues in the courts.” More

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      US military kills 14 in attacks on vessels in the Pacific, according to Hegseth

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      The US military killed 14 people and left one survivor in more strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the eastern Pacific, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said on Monday, as the Trump administration continued to expand its campaign beyond the Caribbean.The latest strikes mean the US has now attacked at least 13 vessels and brought the officially acknowledged death toll to 51 people since the campaign began at the start of September.Hegseth did not provide geographic details beyond saying that the strikes took place in the eastern Pacific, in international waters. Last week, the administration started targeting boats on the western side of the Americas after initially focusing on boats off the coast of Venezuela.The four boats were hit on Sunday in three strikes, Hegseth said in a social media post announcing the matter. His said the boats were “known by our intelligence apparatus, transiting along known narco-trafficking routes, and carrying narcotics”. He also acknowledged there was a survivor.In perhaps an effort to avoid the legally thorny questions that could come with detaining that person, Hegseth said the US enlisted Mexico to take on search-and-rescue responsibilities – which Mexico accepted.Hegseth sought to justify the attacks by comparing the US strikes against alleged drug traffickers to conducting strikes on al-Qaida targets during the global “war on terror”.“The Department has spent over TWO DECADES defending other homelands. Now, we’re defending our own. These narco-terrorists have killed more Americans than Al-Qaeda, and they will be treated the same. We will track them, we will network them, and then, we will hunt and kill them,” Hegseth said.Even so, the justification for the strikes has been widely disputed by legal experts. For one, when the US killed al-Qaida members, Congress had authorized the use of force. In targeting drug cartel members, the administration has relied on Trump’s Article II powers to defend the US against an imminent threat.Republican senator Rand Paul, who has been at odds with Trump in recent weeks, on Tuesday expressed criticism with the unilateral strikes and the prospect of a wider escalation with the Venezuelan government.“I am disturbed by the actions with blowing up boats, with people whom we don’t know their name, we’ve been presented with no evidence of a crime,” Paul told reporters. “We don’t even know if they’re armed, frankly, and that’s more indicative of a war. It may be a prelude to war, but I hope it’s not.”Still, the latest boat strikes come as the US appears destined to start hitting land-based targets in the coming weeks, after the Pentagon sent its most advanced aircraft carrier and its strike group to the Caribbean – a major escalation in the Trump administration’s stated war against drug cartels.The move is expected to bring the USS Gerald Ford, with its dozens of fighter jets and its accompanying destroyers, to the coast of Venezuela by roughly the end of the week, according to a person familiar with the matter.Sending the carrier strike group to the Caribbean is the clearest sign to date that the administration intends to dramatically expand the scope of its lethal military campaign from hitting small boats alleged to be carrying drugs bound for the US to targets on land.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe supercarrier has dozens of F-18 Super Hornet jets that increase the offensive firepower and ability for the US to hit air-defense systems in Venezuela. That would clear the way for US special operations or drones to destroy land-based targets, current and former officials said.Donald Trump confirmed to reporters at the White House on 23 October that the next stage of the campaign was to hit targets on the ground. “The land is going to be next,” the president said. “The land drugs are much more dangerous for them. It’s going to be much more dangerous. You’ll be seeing that soon.”Trump did not discuss which targets in which countries the US intended to strike. But he directed Hegseth, who was seated beside him at the White House event about curbing the flow of illegal drugs into the US, to notify Congress about the administration’s plans.Asked whether he would declare war against the cartels, Trump suggested he would continue with individual strikes. “I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK?” he said. “We’re going to kill them, you know? They’re going to be, like, dead.” More

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      Republican senator calls Trump’s military airstrikes ‘extrajudicial killings’

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      The Trump administration’s military airtrikes against boats off Venezuela’s coast that the White House claims were being used for drug trafficking are “extrajudicial killings”, said Rand Paul, the president’s fellow Republican and US senator from Kentucky.Paul’s strong comments on the topic came on Sunday during an interview on Republican-friendly Fox News, three days after Donald Trump publicly claimed he “can’t imagine” federal lawmakers would have “any problem” with the strikes when asked about seeking congressional approval for them.US forces in recent weeks have carried out at least eight strikes against boats in the Caribbean off Venezuela’s coast, killing about 40 people that the Trump administration has insisted were involved in smuggling drugs.Speaking with Fox News Sunday anchor Shannon Bream, Paul asserted that Congress has “gotten no information” on the campaign of strikes from Trump’s administration – despite the president claiming the White House would be open to briefing the federal lawmakers about the offensive.“No one said their name, no one said what evidence, no one said whether they’re armed, and we’ve had no evidence presented,” Paul said of the targeted boats or those on board. He argued that the Trump administration’s actions bring to mind the way China and Iran’s repressive governments have previously executed drug smugglers.“They summarily execute people without presenting evidence to the public,” Paul contended in his conversation with Bream. “So it’s wrong.”Paul’s comments separate him from other Republican members of Congress who have spoken in favor of the Trump administration’s offensive near Venezuela, including US House representative Bernie Moreno of Ohio and Senator Cynthia Loomis of Wyoming, as reported by the US news website Semafor.The Kentucky libertarian joined Democratic US senators Tim Kaine of Virginia and Adam Schiff of California in introducing a war powers resolution that would have blocked the Trump administration’s use of military strikes within or against Venezuela. But the measure failed to win a majority in the Senate.Trump on Friday told the media that his administration would be willing to brief lawmakers on the strikes but simply saw no reason to seek congressional authorization for them.“I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK?” Trump said. “We’re going to kill them. They’re going to be – like – dead.”Paul has had military-related disagreements with Trump before his Sunday interview on Fox.Trump telegraphed his intent to use the US military to support his administration’s goals of deporting immigrants en masse before he won his second presidency in the 2024 election. After Trump’s second electoral victory but before he retook the Oval Office in January, Paul said he believed using the military in support of deportation was “illegal” and a task better suited for US law enforcement. “It’s a terrible image, and I … oppose that,” Paul said at the time. More

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      Trump backer Timothy Mellon identified as donor of $130m for US troop pay during government shutdown

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      A reclusive billionaire, anti-tax crusader and major financial backer of Donald Trump has been named as the anonymous private donor who gave $130m to the government to help pay US troops during the federal shutdown that is now in its fourth week, according to the New York Times.Timothy Mellon, heir to the gilded age industrialist and former treasury secretary Andrew Mellon, is the secret donor whom Trump has described as a “friend”, “great American” and “patriot”, but has refused to name, the Times reported on Saturday, citing two anonymous sources familiar with the arrangement.Trump first announced the secret, legally controversial donation on Thursday amid growing clamor about the potential financial hardship being caused by the ongoing federal shutdown on the 1.3 million active duty military troops.​​“He doesn’t want publicity,” Trump said on Friday as he headed to Malaysia. “He prefers that his name not be mentioned, which is pretty unusual in the world I come from, and in the world of politics, you want your name mentioned.”​​The Pentagon told the Times that the donation was accepted under the “general gift acceptance authority”.“The donation was made on the condition that it be used to offset the cost of service members’ salaries and benefits,” said Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson, in a statement.Still, the donation, which equates to about $100 per service member, appears to be a potential violation of the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits federal agencies from spending funds in advance or in excess of congressional appropriations – and from accepting voluntary services “except in the case of emergency involving the safety of human life or the protection of property”.Potential penalties for violations include both administrative and criminal sanctions such as suspension or removal from duty, fines and imprisonment.A White House spokesperson referred the Guardian to the treasury department, which has been contacted for comment.Mellon, 80, pumped over $165m to back Trump, Robert F Kennedy and other Republican candidates during the 2024 election cycle, making him the top donor fueling outside spending groups last year, according to the campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets. This included $125m to the Super PAC Make America Great Again Inc, which supported Trump, according to Federal Election Commission documents. Mellon has also given money to Kennedy’s anti-vaccine group, Children’s Health Defense.Mellon, a retired railroad magnet who lives mostly in Wyoming, is a relatively new player in campaign financing, donating just $32,000 in the 2016 election cycle when Trump first ran for office. This jumped to $10m in 2016 and $60m in 2020, when in a rare interview with Bloomberg the recluse said he believed Trump had delivered on what he’d said on the stump.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn 2021, the Texas Tribune reported that Mellon had donated $53m to Texas governor Greg Abbott’s fund to build a wall on the state’s border with Mexico.Mellon’s wealth and anti-tax leanings can be traced back to his industrialist grandfather, who made his money in banking and investments in startups before serving as treasury secretary from 1921 to 1932.The Mellon family remains one of the country’s richest with a combined net worth of $14bn in 2024, according to Forbes. Timothy Mellon’s individual wealth is unclear, with reported estimates ranging from $700m to $4bn. More

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      Trump was planning to send troops to San Francisco. Now he’s not. Here’s why | Joe Eskenazi

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      This story was published in collaboration with Mission Local.The mayor of San Francisco said on Thursday that Donald Trump had simply called him – no go-betweens or consigliere required – and told him there would no longer be a deployment of federal agents or troops to the city.The president simply dialed Daniel Lurie up and talked at him. And, just like that, a daylong crisis and flood-the-zone news cycle across the Bay Area regarding the imminent deployment of border protection agents to the region was quelled. Or not: Oakland’s mayor, Barbara Lee, said the president didn’t call her. Lurie and other local leaders are taking the president’s words to mean that the rest of the Bay Area will be spared – but there was no overt pledge regarding that.It’s great for the people of San Francisco that the president has capriciously decided to unsend the troops he capriciously decided to send. But the real story here is, per the president’s summation on social media of his discussion with Lurie, that the commander-in-chief is overtly stating that he is basing a domestic military deployment upon what local “friends of mine” (the billionaire CEOs Jensen Huang of Nvidia and the local boy Marc Benioff of Salesforce) lobbied him to do. Trump also noted that Lurie asked him “very nicely” not to establish a military beachhead in San Francisco.All for the good. But what if Huang and Benioff had been in the mood for a military parade and called for sending in the troops? What if Lurie had been less polite?If things had gone even slightly differently, it stands to reason that federal immigration agents and/or armed troops could be rolling through the city by now.There are only so many turns of phrase you can employ: this is just a profoundly fucked-up way to lead a country. It’s like dealing with King George or a warlord out of the dark Ages.This city’s billionaires are very good at some things, and those things have made them a lot of money. But being good at those things doesn’t make your average billionaire an expert on military intervention, the local drug trade or, for that matter, immigration policy or crime in the city.Speaking of capricious, Benioff was for sending in the guard before he was against it.It figures: Salesforce veterans tell me they expect Benioff would do great schmoozing in a one-on-one with the president – because their personalities are so similar.For a guy who drinks so much coffee, Daniel Lurie is remarkably even-keeled. When asked about his discussion with Trump, Lurie told the press that he simply recited all of San Francisco’s heartening crime statistics over the telephone – and kept reciting them, sprinkling in a little real estate boosterism along the way.“Everything I told you is all I said to him,” the mayor said today. “I keep repeating, and I said to him, that we are at 70-year lows when it comes to violent crimes. Tent encampments are at record lows. I spoke about more office space being leased than vacated. For the first time, retail is back. Hotel bookings are up 50%. Convention bookings are also up 50%. This is a city on the rise. And that’s what I said to him. And that’s what I say to everybody.”The president, Lurie said, “asked nothing of me”. Nobody was made to purchase Trump’s 555 California St property at an exorbitant markup. No promises to build a Trump Tower on top of Salesforce Tower were required to call off the troops. It remains unclear whether Lurie finally referred to Trump by name when on the phone with Trump. Evidently, he wasn’t asked to.I’d like to think the mayor really did say “retail is back!” to the man presently tearing down the White House to install a ballroom fit for people who feel Versailles is too understated. If he did, it worked.But nobody is expecting peace in our time: “They want to give it a ‘shot’,” Trump wrote. “Therefore we will not surge San Francisco on Saturday.”All of the things Lurie told the president – and “everybody” – are true. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: subjectively, you may not feel safe in San Francisco. Objectively, you’ve rarely been safer. San Francisco’s reported crime totals are low, and that’s something you could say before this mayor or this president. We are on pace for our lowest homicide total since 1954, but last year’s total was the lowest since 1961. Car break-ins, which were long part of the San Francisco Condition and gave us the municipal nickname “bip city” are way down.But the fact that it was true does not matter: what Huang or Benioff or other billionaire pals tell the president is what matters.The problem, however, is that parts of San Francisco still look gnarly – gnarlier, arguably, than they did in the 1970s when teams of serial killers roamed the streets. There are swaths of the city in which people are living in overt filth and misery and are overtly buying, selling and using drugs. There are still unhoused people, drug addicts and unhoused drug addicts shambling about. They may be disinclined to give you the Zodiac killer treatment, but their presence makes people uncomfortable. This makes people – including terminally online tech CEOs and venture capitalists – feel unsafe. This makes ostensibly intelligent tech barons ping the president on social media and ask him to send in the national guard.If Lurie did indeed stave off an intervention of armed soldiers or rampaging immigration agents by telling the truth, then more power to him. To paraphrase the familiar quote, honesty is one of the better policies.But the “shot” Lurie has apparently been granted was to clean up a problem he has explained – quantitatively – that we don’t have. Lurie will purportedly meet with the attorney general, Pam Bondi. But it remains to be seen whether any federal assistance from the FBI or DEA to combat drug trafficking doesn’t come with serious – and capricious – strings attached. Every bargain with Trump and his gang is a Faustian bargain.San Francisco’s crime stats have been headed the right way for a while. But our gnarliness vibes have not – so we recalled our district attorney and dumped our prior mayor. It’s not enough for Lurie to point to numbers. He has to deliver the right vibes – the kind of vibes that can appease our billionaire class and the president they call up and lobby. That’s a hard job. Get that man a cup of coffee.Retail, they say, is back. It remains to be seen whether and when federal immigration agents will be, too.

      Joe Eskenazi is an editor and columnist for Mission Local. Io Yeh Gilman and Xueer Lu contributed reporting More

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      Why is Trump, the self-proclaimed ‘president of peace’, aiming to topple the Venezuelan regime?

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      It was a solemn pledge at the heart of Donald Trump’s “America first” appeal.A “Make America great again” (Maga) foreign policy would mean the end of military commitments that had in the past sucked the US into draining and drawn-out wars far from its own shores.Now an intense military buildup targeting the authoritarian regime of Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela is stretching that commitment to the breaking point, as the White House strikes a bellicose posture that seems to mock Trump’s self-proclaimed “president of peace” image.In recent weeks, US forces have carried out at least eight strikes, killing at least 38 people, against boats in the Caribbean off Venezuela’s coast that Washington said were being used for drug trafficking. The latest strike, announced on Friday by Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, reportedly killed six people on a boat allegedly being used to smuggle drugs on what was said to be “a known narco-trafficking route”.Two further strikes in the Pacific this week killed at least five people as tensions also rose between the US and Colombia over the Trump administration’s tactics against alleged traffickers.But the main focus has been Venezuela amid a buildup that has seen nuclear-capable B-52 bombers and elite special operations forces deployed off the South American country’s shores.Trump this month signaled a further escalation by authorising the CIA to conduct operations inside the country, fuelling fears that the US was trying to foment a military coup against Maduro – whom it has designated a “narco-terrorist” and for whose arrest it has offered a $50m bounty – or even prepare a ground invasion.“Action on the ground would be the least preferred option, and it certainly wouldn’t be GI Joe – it would be special ops people,” said Fulton Armstrong, a former CIA analyst and national intelligence officer for Latin America.“With technology, you don’t need to invade any more. The whole idea, I believe, is to get the Venezuelans to take him out.”Some Venezuelan analysts say local support for a coup is thin.The policy has been shaped by a Trump administration power struggle that has seen Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and acting national security adviser, triumph over Richard Grenell, Trump’s envoy to Venezuela, who was sidelined after arguing for a pragmatic approach that would help secure oil deals.Maduro and other senior regime figures are said to have offered extensive concessions in an effort to end the confrontation with Washington, including offering the US a dominant stake in Venezuela’s oil industry. The Trump administration has even eased some sanctions on Venezuelan oil, granting Chevron a licence to resume operating in the country and increase exports from Venezuela. But longstanding tensions have instead escalated further after Rubio pressed the case for a tough approach.“Trump had, in many conversations, meetings with different people emphasized that he really only cared about [Venezuela’s] oil,” said a US businessman with longstanding ties to Venezuela and close knowledge of the White House’s policy. “But Rubio was able to drum up this ‘narco-terrorist’ rhetoric and get Trump to pivot completely. The U-turn really reflects Rubio’s expanded influence in the administration.”Rubio, a longtime critic of Maduro’s socialist regime, won the support of Stephen Miller, the powerful White House deputy chief of staff, and Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, in persuading Trump.He did so partly by seizing on the administration’s designation of Tren de Aragua, a transnational gang of Venezuelan origin, as a “foreign terrorist organisation” that had infiltrated the US and allegedly fuelled the influx of undocumented migrants fleeing Maduro’s regime.A White House proclamation last March further identified the gang as being in cahoots with the Cartel de los Soles, a shadowy grouping of Venezuelan military figures which the administration insists is headed by Maduro and is responsible for trafficking drugs to the US. Other sources have questioned that characterisation of the cartel and Maduro’s connections to it.Experts also question Venezuela’s significance as a drugs supplier. Although the country is a conduit for trafficking, it is not a primary source for most illegal substances entering the US. Fentanyl, which is responsible for most US drug-related deaths, is mainly sourced from Mexico.There are doubts over the legality of the boat strikes – which Rubio has vociferously justified – and the military escalation in the name of combating drugs.The White House insists the actions, believed to be led by the CIA, are legal under the 2001 USA Patriot Act – passed after the 9/11 al-Qaida attacks – which affords scope for action against designated foreign terrorists, a category that now includes Maduro.William Brownfield, a former ambassador to Venezuela and ex-state department drugs and law enforcement czar, said the policy was unprecedented and vulnerable to legal challenge.“I never had anyone seriously suggest to me during my seven years as drugs and law enforcement chief that this issue could be addressed the way it is now,” he said. “I couldn’t even propose it because no one would even entertain the thought of using the military for a law enforcement mission.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUnderlying Rubio’s drive may be a mixture of ideology and political ambition. The son of Cuban immigrants, he has long denounced Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, for the financial and oil support they have provided to Cuba’s communist regime.Observers say Rubio is eyeing the Republican presidential nomination in 2028 – when Trump is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term and where adopting a hard line on Venezuela could help secure the Cuban ethnic vote in a close primary election.Tommy Pigott, a state department spokesman, played down Rubio’s role in shaping the policy, saying in a statement: “The president is the one who drives and determines our foreign policy. It is the job of the cabinet to implement. Secretary Rubio is honored to be a part of the president’s team.”He added: “Maduro is not the legitimate leader of Venezuela; he’s a fugitive of American justice who undermines regional security and poisons Americans and we want to see him brought to justice.”But there are also wider foreign policy considerations as the US tries to revive its historical habit of treating Latin America as its back yard.“Rubio’s position is that the United States was not paying sufficient attention to the Latin American region writ large and I actually agree with that,” said Brownfield. “The Trump administration is, in fact, being fairly clear when it says that the Maduro regime is a threat to basic democratic values throughout the western hemisphere.”Angelo Rivero Santos, a Latin American studies professor at Georgetown University and former diplomat in Venezuela’s embassy in Washington, said the Trump administration was reasserting the Monroe doctrine, devised in the 19th century and which saw the US claiming Latin America as its exclusive sphere of influence.“It’s not only Venezuela,” he said. “When you look at their statements on the Panama canal, at the impositions of tariffs on Brazil, the latest spat with the Colombian government, not to mention the military presence in the Caribbean, you see a return of the Monroe doctrine.”One aim, Santos argued, was to install more Trump-friendly governments in the region similar to those of Javier Milei, Argentina’s president; Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador; and Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa.Another, said Armstrong, the former CIA analyst, was an “ultra-nationalist” projection of strength.“The message is: ‘We’re tough guys,’” he said. “Maduro, like the Cubans, has given the United States the finger and told us to go fuck ourselves, and we have failed with all of the so-called maximum pressure policy that started in Trump 1.0 and has continued and increased in Trump 2.0.”The result, he warned, could be an unpredictable sequence of events as the US tries to goad Maduro into retaliation, which could be used to engineer his downfall.“They can hit a naval target, say a coastal civilian facility, and that might be the provocation that gets Maduro to hit back and maybe do something dumb,” he said. “Then you go for big targets in Caracas, and get a form of chaos. If that doesn’t do it, you put a couple of guys in, special forces or Navy Seals, to do a snatch. Of course he’s not going to go alive. I don’t see a pretty solution.”Aram Roston contributed additional reporting More

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      Portland judge rejects Trump request to allow national guard deployment

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      A federal judge in Portland, Oregon, on Friday rejected the Trump administration’s request to immediately lift her order blocking the deployment of federalized national guard troops to the city, saying that she would decide the matter by Monday.The hearing in Portland and one in Washington DC are the latest in a head-spinning array of lawsuits and overlapping rulings prompted by Trump’s push to send the military into Democratic-run cities despite fierce resistance from mayors and governors. Troop deployment remains blocked in the Chicago area, where all sides are waiting to see whether the US supreme court intervenes to allow it.The Portland district court judge, Karin Immergut, who is based in the city, had previously issued two temporary restraining orders blocking the deployment of national guards troops there, in response to a persistent but small protest outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office.Her first order, blocking the deployment of 200 troops from the Oregon national guard, said that Donald Trump had exceeded his authority by taking federal control of the troops based on his claim that the city was in a state of war-like rebellion. Trump’s assessment, Immergut ruled, was “simply untethered to the facts”.When Trump responded to that order by sending 200 troops from California’s national guard to Oregon, and threatened to send 400 more from Texas, Immergut determined it was an attempt to evade her order, and issued a second order barring the deployment of troops from anywhere in the country to Portland.Immergut’s first order was lifted on Monday by a three-judge panel of the ninth circuit court of appeals, over the strong dissent of the only judge on the panel who lives in Portland. But because the government never appealed Immergut’s second order, it remains in effect and the deployment of troops remains blocked until she decides whether or not to lift or modify it in response to the appeals court ruling.At a virtual hearing on Friday, Immergut cited two reasons for her to delay lifting the second injunction. The first was that the appeals court did not address a central fact in her second order: that she had issued it in part because the government responded to her first order by attempting to evade it. The second was that the ninth circuit appeals court is currently considering a call from one of its judges to rehear the appeal of her first order before a larger panel of 11 judges.At the end of the hearing, Immergut said that she would decide by Monday, if not earlier.The US district judge, Jia Cobb, an appointee of Joe Biden, was hearing arguments Friday on a request from Brian Schwalb, the District of Columbia attorney general, for an order that would remove more than 2,000 guard members from Washington streets.In August, Trump issued an executive order declaring a crime emergency in the district – though the Department of Justice itself says violent crime there is at a 30-year low.Within a month, more than 2,300 guard troops from eight states and the district were patrolling under the army secretary’s command. Trump also deployed hundreds of federal agents to assist them.It is unclear how long the deployments will last, but attorneys from Schwalb’s office said troops were likely to remain in Washington through at least next summer.“Our constitutional democracy will never be the same if these occupations are permitted to stand,” they wrote.Government lawyers said Congress empowered the president to control the DC national guard’s operation. They argued that Schwalb’s lawsuit is a frivolous “political stunt” threatening to undermine a successful campaign to reduce violent crime in Washington.Although the emergency period ended in September, more than 2,200 troops remain. Several states told the Associated Press they would bring their units home by 30 November, unless their deployment is extended.Among the states that sent troops to the district was West Virginia. A civic organization called the West Virginia Citizen Action Group says the governor, Patrick Morrisey, exceeded his authority by deploying 300 to 400 guard members to support Trump’s efforts there.Morrisey has said West Virginia “is proud to stand with President Trump”, and his office has said the deployment was authorized under federal law. The state attorney general’s office has asked Richard D Lindsay, a Kanawha county circuit court judge, to reject the case, saying the group has not been harmed and lacks standing to challenge Morrisey’s decision.Lindsay heard some arguments Friday before continuing the hearing to 3 November to give the state time to focus more on whether Morrisey had the authority to deploy the cuard members.“I want that issue addressed,” Lindsay said.April Perry, a district judge, on Wednesday blocked guard deployment to the Chicago area until a case in her court is decided or the US supreme court intervenes. Perry previously blocked the deployment for two weeks through a temporary restraining order.Attorneys representing the federal government said they would agree to extend the order, but would also continue pressing for an emergency order from the supreme court that would allow for the deployment.Lawyers representing Chicago and Illinois have asked the supreme court to continue to block the deployment, calling it a “dramatic step”. More