Trump Promises Iowans Huge Steel Mill–In 2030. Gee, wonder what motivated that?
President Trump, staring down a rough midterm season for Republicans, unveiled plans for an Iowa steel mill project on Monday that he said would plug billions into the economy and create construction jobs in a state hit hard by his policies.
Voters in Midwestern states were crucial to delivering a second election win to Mr. Trump, but now, those voters are among the hardest hit by tariff-driven manufacturing costs and a rise in fuel prices driven by the war in Iran. When a reporter in the Oval Office asked him on Monday why several Republican candidates in Iowa were working so hard to protect their seats, Mr. Trump seemed mystified.
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Trump, who is traveling to several states this week ahead of the midterm elections. “I love Iowa. I’ve always been very strong with Iowa.”
In the Oval Office on Monday, Mr. Trump, several cabinet members and Iowa Republicans said the project would remind voters that Mr. Trump’s policies have created jobs. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who is facing a tough re-election race and who last week voted to curb Mr. Trump’s war powers, appeared to be behind Mr. Trump, telling reporters that the steel mill could create some 6,000 construction jobs and 1,750 permanent jobs, with salaries that could exceed $100,000 a year.
“We’re going to mine it in America. We’re going to mill it in America, and we’re going to make it in America,” Ms. Miller-Meeks said.
Mesabi Metallic is owned by Essar Group, a Mumbai-based conglomerate controlled by one of India’s wealthiest families. The Iowa mill project follows another initiative led by Mesabi: a $2.5 billion iron-ore mine and pellet plant in Nashwauk, Minn.
Here are real pictures and video from Trump’s announcement (Spoiler Alert: He fell asleep again).
Which happens first–The War in Iran ends, or the steel plant goes online?:
After having claimed dozens of times during the spring and summer that his war against Iran was effectively over and that he had won it, President Donald Trump is now admitting that neither assertion was true.
For the second time in as many days, Trump on Monday said his war that began seven months ago today is still ongoing. “We’re going to win that war very soon,” he told reporters during an Oval Office photo opportunity.
The message was the same the day previous, in an interview with Fox News during his visit to a golf tournament outside Chicago. “I think what’s going to happen is we’re going to win the war very soon,” he said.
The statements come after the several dozens of times in recent months that Trump has claimed the war was essentially already over. They reflect a new effort by Trump and the GOP to convince angry midterm election voters that the war ― and the price hikes that have accompanied it ― will end soon.
“Let me tell you, we’ve won. You know, you never like to say too early you won. We won. We won the ― in the first hour, it was over,” he bragged at a March 11 rally in Kentucky.
On numerous other occasions, Trump has said a peace deal was days or even hours away, or that he could secure such an agreement because Iran was “begging” for one.
“They’re willing to give us everything,” he said at a June 8 speech in South Carolina, in which he also claimed he would “declare total victory” in the next two weeks.
Trump’s White House did not respond to HuffPost queries asking why the president was now changing his analysis about the war and who had won it.
Trump’s new concession came as he tried to explain why gasoline and diesel prices were so high.
“We’re going to win that war very soon. That will be over and the gas prices will come tumbling down,” he said Monday, and a little later: “As soon as that war ends, inflation is going to be eradicated totally.”
This has gotten very little attention, as far as I can tell. But it sounds quite sleazy and another example of the US government becoming a de facto investment arm of the Trump Corporation/TrumpaNostra. Lukoil, the Russian oil company, put up for sale most of its foreign assets outside of Kazakstan about a year ago. This was in response to new US sanctions. Carlyle Group and a couple other bidders have wanted to purchase these assets but approvals have been stalled in regulatory approvals in Washington. Now a group led by billionaire financier Todd Boehly is close to securing the deal. Partnering with him are, according to The Financial Times (paywall), a group of “Gulf power brokers with ties to the Trump family” and … the US government itself, in the form of the US International Development Finance Corporation.
The current CEO of the DFC is Ben Black, son of Leon Black, a decades-long Trump pal and business associate, who is deep, deep into the Epstein saga and controversies.
The Trump-connected families are …
The US International Development Finance Corporation and Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser and brother of its president, are in Boehly’s consortium. The billionaire Syrian-Qatari Al-Khayyat family, which has worked closely with the White House and Trump family members on property and energy projects, is also included.
The Al-Khayyat bros (two brothers, not using that term just loosely) are partners in that (fairly controversial) Albanian resort development that Jared and Ivanka are seeking. So pretty extensive ties. The other guy being the brother of the leader of the UAE speaks for itself.
Have The Bots Already Taken Over?:
OpenAI said Monday it was delaying the release of a new artificial intelligence model out of security concerns voiced by its researchers, the latest in the company’s effort to decelerate the pace of the technology’s advance.
OpenAI’s decision to hold back the model, called GPT-6.1 Astra, comes amid a broader push within the industry to slow the development of increasingly autonomous systems until safety measures can catch up. The announcement comes a day before AI executives are set to huddle with President Donald Trump in Washington as technology companies face new pressure to be accountable for how their models can be abused.
OpenAI paused training of its most advanced models last week, saying training would resume “only when we are confident that we have additional safeguards.”
That was after it disclosed instances in which AI agents exceeded their instructions, including by accessing government websites without authorization.
There’s also this warning from Anthropic:
Anthropic is telling investors that advanced AI could pose “catastrophic or existential risks to humanity”, according to reports, as it prepares for a potential $2tn flotation. The warning inside the startup’s IPO prospectus, which has yet to be made public, was reported by Reuters and the Financial Times. The company has previously called for a slowdown in the breakneck development of AI technology.
This explains why Trump is opposed to any safeguards–he knows he’s on his last legs, and he doesn’t want anyone left to sully his legacy. I’m not being snarky, I truly believe this.
What do you want to talk about?
