For nearly four decades, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García built his power on a simple belief: he could outlast every badge, every indictment and every government hunting him. On Monday, an American courtroom reduced that legend to two numbers. Life. And $15 billion. The 76-year-old co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in federal prison and ordered to forfeit $15 billion in drug-trafficking profits. Co-Founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia SENTENCED TO LIFE IN PRISON and Ordered to Forfeit $15 Billion in Drug Trafficking Profits "Today, narco-trafficker El Mayo was sentenced to life in prison, marking the end of his reign over the Sinaloa Cartel,… pic.twitter.com/pWyPn2VJno — Criminal Division (@DOJCrimDiv) July 20, 2026 The Justice Department’s sentencing announcement describes a criminal enterprise that moved lethal quantities of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and fentanyl into the United States while sending billions in illegal proceeds back to Mexico. Prosecutors said Zambada used bribery to buy protection, intimidation to silence witnesses and murder to defend the cartel’s power. He pleaded guilty to serving as a principal leader of a continuing criminal enterprise and to a racketeering charge. The operation was not some street gang with a bigger budget. It had international transportation routes, chemical suppliers, money-laundering networks, corrupt officials and an enforcement arm willing to kill anyone who got in the way. That is why President Trump’s decision to treat the Sinaloa cartel as a foreign terrorist organization matters. These groups sell far more than contraband. They poison American communities, destabilize a neighboring country, corrupt governments and turn the border into a commercial artery for organized violence. Zambada’s arrest came in July 2024, before President Trump returned to office. The investigation itself stretched across administrations and depended on years of work by American and Mexican law enforcement. There is no need to rewrite that timeline. The real achievement is more durable: the government did not let a decades-old case fade away after the headlines moved on. Monday’s sentence was folded into the administration’s Homeland Security Task Force initiative, which brings federal agencies together against cartels, transnational gangs, trafficking rings and the financial systems that sustain them. That approach recognizes an uncomfortable truth. Arresting one kingpin is not enough if his money, suppliers, lieutenants and corrupt protectors remain untouched. #

The race for artificial intelligence may sound like a contest over chips, code and algorithms. Underneath all of it is a much more physical question: where will the electricity come from? President Trump’s administration just put a remarkably concrete answer on federal land in South Carolina. The National Nuclear Security Administration selected Amentum to negotiate a phased lease at the Savannah River Site for a 1-gigawatt AI data center backed by approximately 2 gigawatts of dedicated on-site power generation. The proposed energy system would begin with natural gas and bridge to nuclear power. We are taking a major step forward to strengthen America’s leadership in artificial intelligence and expand reliable energy generation. Today, NNSA announced the selection of @amentum_corp to enter negotiations for a phased lease to develop a 1-gigawatt AI data center and up to… — NNSA (@NNSANews) July 20, 2026 The NNSA announcement says the plan is designed to do three things at once: expand domestic AI computing, add reliable generation and make productive use of federal property without pushing the project’s electricity costs onto existing utility customers. That last promise is not a footnote. Communities across the country are watching enormous data centers arrive with equally enormous power demands. The political backlash writes itself when ordinary families are asked to pay higher utility bills so the world’s wealthiest technology companies can feed their servers. This project is supposed to take a different route. Its power would be built with the data center, not quietly pulled from a strained grid and billed back to everyone else. NNSA says the on-site generation should meet the project’s load while also increasing the amount of electricity available to the wider grid. That is the kind of bargain Americans can understand: if a private project needs industrial-scale power, it should help create industrial-scale power. The proposal also shows why President Trump has tied AI policy to energy policy from the beginning. No country wins the next computing era by rationing electricity, closing reliable plants and hoping software can run on press releases. America needs more generation, faster permitting, secure infrastructure and enough capacity to grow without forcing families to compete with server farms for power. @amentum_corp has been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to enter negotiations for a groundbreaking project at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina—one of the nation’s largest integrated artificial intelligence… pic.twitter.com/Sgw9m2yxnz — amentum (@amentum_corp) July 20, 2026 Amentum’s announcement says the project would be one of the nation’s largest integrated AI-and-energy infrastructure developments if the lease is finalized. The company points to its decades of work at Savannah River and its experience in nuclear operations, infrastructure development and high-security government projects. That background matters at a site whose mission is inseparable from national security. Artificial intelligence infrastructure is no longer just a commercial issue. The same computing capacity that powers consumer tools also shapes defense systems, scientific research, intelligence analysis and the industrial competition with China. Placing a large project on a federal nuclear-security site raises the bar for safety and security. It also creates a rare chance to plan the data center and its energy source as one system instead of bolting a massive new customer onto infrastructure built for another era. The Savannah River proposal did not appear from nowhere. In April 2025, the Energy Department identified 16 federal locations that could support AI data centers and related power infrastructure. Savannah River and three other sites later advanced to private-sector development efforts. The administration’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge established the central rule: technology companies driving the data-center boom should provide new generation, strengthen the grid and avoid shifting their costs to American households. The White House says rapid growth in AI and domestic manufacturing is creating a surge in electricity demand at a time when large parts of the grid already face capacity pressure. The pledge is meant to turn new data centers into a reason to add power instead of a new claim on a limited supply. President Trump launched America’s AI Action Plan in July 2025 with permitting reform, grid expansion and more domestic generation at its core. The administration has also moved to keep reliable power plants online and accelerate advanced nuclear reactors that can serve large computing sites. In other words, the Savannah River plan is not an isolated real-estate deal. It is a test of whether the country can build the computing infrastructure and the energy infrastructure together—without handing the bill to families who never asked for a data center next door. What are your thoughts? TAP HERE TO ADD YOUR VOTE There is still a long road between selection and construction. NNSA is explicit that Amentum has been chosen to enter negotiations. A final lease has not been awarded. Any agreement remains subject to successful negotiations, permits, safety and security evaluations and other federal approvals. Timelines, financing details and the final nuclear technology have not been announced. That caution makes the announcement more credible, not less. The government is defining the project’s direction without pretending every engineering and regulatory question has already been solved. The direction is the real story. For years, Washington treated energy, computing and federal land as separate policy silos. President Trump is putting them on the same map: use American land, build American power, protect American ratepayers and keep the infrastructure that will shape the future inside the United States. AI may be digital. Winning the race will require steel, turbines, reactors, pipelines, transmission and people who know how to build. At Savannah River, America may finally be preparing all of it together. The post President Trump’s AI Push Just Found a New Home — And It Comes With Its Own Power Plant appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.

President Trump just told America’s defense contractors that a familiar excuse is about to stop working. Starting January 1, 2027, companies that rely on critical military materials from hostile nations will no longer be able to win routine waivers by simply claiming an acceptable alternative was unavailable. Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Secures America’s Defense Supply Chains and Ensures Domestic Acquisition of Critical Materials — Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 20, 2026 The White House fact sheet describes a shift from trusting defense-industry assurances to demanding proof. The order tightens the circumstances in which the Department of War may waive restrictions on covered materials and tells contractors to begin qualifying new sources in the United States or allied nations. Trusted partners remain part of American defense production. The target is dependence that can leave U.S. weapons vulnerable to countries capable of withholding materials, compromising components or exploiting a hidden bottleneck during a crisis. The administration is also directing the department to remove regulatory barriers that slow the testing and approval of replacement materials. That matters because a paper prohibition means little if a domestic mine, processor or manufacturer spends years waiting to become an approved supplier. The federal procurement statute, known as 10 USC 4872, covers samarium-cobalt and neodymium-iron-boron magnets, tungsten powder and heavy alloy, tantalum metals and alloys, and molybdenum. It identifies China, Russia, Iran and North Korea as covered nations. The law bars the Defense Department from procuring covered material melted or produced in those countries, as well as end items containing covered material manufactured there. Congress preserved narrow exceptions when compliant material of the needed quality, quantity or form cannot be obtained at a reasonable price. It also allowed written national-security waivers—the escape hatch President Trump is now tightening. Those are not decorative pieces. High-performance magnets, tungsten and other specialty materials sit inside aircraft, missiles, electronics, guidance systems and the industrial machinery needed to build them. America can assemble a weapons system at home and still discover that a tiny, irreplaceable link in the chain belongs to an adversary. President Trump’s order goes after that illusion of security. The full executive order says waivers after the deadline will require a formal mitigation plan. A contractor must identify the noncompliant source, document exhaustive efforts to obtain a compliant material, explain how it will remove the problem from its supply chain and commit to a strict timeline. Most important, failing to qualify a domestic source will not automatically prove that a compliant material is unavailable. The company must show active, adequately funded and ongoing work to qualify one. That is the old excuse being closed. “We could not find it” will no longer be enough when the contractor never spent the money or did the work required to build an alternative. BREAKING: President Trump has signed an executive order making it harder for US defense contractors to obtain waivers to buy critical minerals and other materials from China and other prohibited foreign suppliers. — Al Jazeera Breaking News (@AJENews) July 20, 2026 The order goes much further than waivers. Contractors will be required to map designated critical supply chains all the way back to raw-material origin through a complete bill of materials. They must vet suppliers for financial weakness, foreign ownership or control, manufacturing dependence and other vulnerabilities. Significant risks must be reported to the department within 15 days of completing that review, followed by a corrective-action plan within 45 days. If a company keeps using an unreliable foreign supplier when an alternative is available, the government may suspend task orders, decline contract options or terminate the contract. Fraud or deliberate deception in a mitigation plan can also be referred to the attorney general for possible prosecution. For decades, Washington treated defense procurement as a contest over the finished product and the final price tag. The hard lesson of modern warfare is that the factory cannot run without secure access to every indispensable material underneath it. President Trump is forcing the Pentagon’s suppliers to show their work before the shooting starts—not after an adversary has already closed the valve. That is what America First looks like when it reaches the factory floor: know where the parts come from, build the alternatives now and stop financing dependence on the regimes our military may one day have to deter. The post President Trump Put Defense Contractors on a Clock — One Old Excuse Won’t Work Anymore appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.

President Trump’s Justice Department is following a river of Chinese money into Harvard—and asking whether American students were pushed away from the bank. The numbers alone are staggering. Harvard has disclosed nearly $4.5 billion from foreign sources, including more than $630 million from China-based sources. The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division announced today it is opening a compliance review into Harvard University to determine whether its China-based financial aid programs and practices exclude American-citizen students. — DOJ Civil Rights Division (@CivilRights) July 20, 2026 The Justice Department announced a Title VI compliance review after an audit of Harvard’s legally required foreign-funding disclosures raised questions about restricted gifts and contracts. DOJ says some China-based donors placed conditions on how their money could be used, including preferences for students from particular countries. Investigators want to know whether Harvard followed those restrictions by steering aid toward foreign students based on national origin and away from Americans or other students. That is the allegation under review. DOJ has not concluded that Harvard broke the law, and the full $630 million is not being described as scholarship money. The investigation is focused on the restricted contributions and the aid programs connected to them. Harvard receives federal financial assistance, which makes it subject to Title VI’s ban on discrimination based on race, color or national origin. Private money does not create a private exemption from the civil-rights obligations attached to federal support. The department’s six-page document demand shows how serious the review is. DOJ ordered Harvard to produce the underlying gift agreements, internal policies, emails, text messages, chat communications and records showing how restricted Chinese funds were transferred or spent. Investigators also requested beneficiary-level data for students who received aid from the programs at issue. The requested fields include nationality, citizenship, country of origin, amount received, school of enrollment and graduation status, along with identifying information the department says it will protect under federal confidentiality rules. The deadline is July 31. If Harvard expects a problem meeting it, the university must contact DOJ by July 24 to discuss an extension. Harvard’s disclosures indicate that it is the American university receiving the most funding from foreign sources, having disclosed nearly $4.5 billion in foreign funding. — Byron Wan (@Byron_Wan) July 20, 2026 The letter names 13 China-based or China-linked contributors whose restricted funds are part of the records request. The list includes China Evergrande Group, a Beijing foundation, universities and Hong Kong charitable or business organizations. Harvard told the Associated Press that it is reviewing the notice. The university said it follows foreign-gift reporting law and does not unlawfully discriminate when awarding financial aid. AP also reported that the $630 million accumulated over decades and that one publicized 2014 gift provided $15 million for Chinese students. Harvard generally offers its own need-based aid to international students, while federal student aid is reserved for eligible Americans. Those facts do not answer DOJ’s question. They explain why the answer must come from the agreements and payment records instead of dueling press statements. If the review finds no violation, the department says it will close the matter. If investigators find discrimination, DOJ will first seek voluntary compliance. A failure to resolve it could lead to suspension or termination of federal assistance or a civil lawsuit. Elite universities have spent years demanding transparency, equity and accountability from everyone else. They should have no objection when the same standards reach their donor files. The real issue is bigger than one scholarship. An American institution taking billions from abroad while accepting federal support owes the public a clear accounting of whose conditions it accepted, who benefited and whether U.S. students were excluded because of where they were born. President Trump has refused to treat Harvard’s prestige as immunity. Now the paper trail gets to speak. The post Harvard Took $630 Million From China. DOJ Wants to Know Who Got Left Out. appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.

Speaker Mike Johnson’s latest attempt to break the Senate blockade around the SAVE America Act just survived a crucial test. The House Rules Committee voted 8-4 Monday evening to clear the rule governing House Concurrent Resolution 113, the fiscal 2027 budget framework Republicans want to use to unlock a third reconciliation bill. That does not make the SAVE America Act law. It does put Johnson’s plan in position for a full House vote this week. And if the strategy works, Senate Democrats could lose the filibuster they have used to keep the election-security package away from President Trump’s desk. The Rules Committee announced the vote moments after it happened: NOTICE OF ACTION The Committee granted, by a recorded vote of 8-4, a rule providing for consideration of H.R. 8800, H.R. 8884, H. Con. Res. 113, H.R. 7008, H.R. 6955, & H.R. 9770. Thanks to @HouseBudgetGOP, @HouseAdmin, @FinancialCmte, & @HouseAppropsGOP for their testimony. — House Rules Committee (@RulesReps) July 20, 2026 What cleared tonight The official House Rules Committee page identifies the measure as House Concurrent Resolution 113 and confirms that the rule was reported by an 8-4 recorded vote on July 20. The committee granted a closed rule for the budget resolution, one hour of floor debate and a procedural path for the House to consider the framework. It also specifies that Rules Committee Print 119-37 will be treated as the controlling text. This is a real hurdle, but it is still a procedural victory. House members must first adopt the rule and then approve the resolution itself before the reconciliation machinery can move forward. The distinction matters. Republicans have not passed the final $95 billion package, and no new election requirements took effect Monday night. Johnson is selling the plan as a three-part America First package: This week, we’re moving forward with the SAVE and Protect America Act to deliver on: ✅Securing our elections✅Strengthening our national defense ✅Supporting our farmers Ultimately, Democrats will have to explain to the American people why they continue putting their COMMUNIST AGENDA ahead of America’s national security. — Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) July 20, 2026 Why Johnson chose reconciliation The standalone SAVE America Act has already passed the House, but it remains trapped in a Senate where ordinary legislation generally needs 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. Budget reconciliation changes that equation. A qualifying reconciliation bill can advance through the Senate with a simple majority, which would allow Republicans to move without Democratic votes if their conference stays together. Johnson’s plan is to place election-integrity spending and key SAVE America Act provisions inside a larger package that also supports the military and American farmers. Fox News says the Rules Committee vote clears the way for a House-wide test vote Tuesday, followed by a final vote Wednesday afternoon under a preliminary schedule. Fox also reports that President Trump urged House Republicans Monday to put as much of the SAVE America Act as possible into the budget bill while delivering aid for farmers and funding for the military. The strategy could strip Senate Democrats of their most powerful procedural weapon. It would replace the search for seven Democratic votes with a far simpler but still demanding task: keeping virtually every Republican in line. Only provisions that satisfy the Senate’s budget rules can receive reconciliation protection, so the exact wording written in the next stage will be decisive. Where the $95 billion would go The budget framework does not write the final legislation. It gives four House committees spending instructions and tells them to submit their recommendations to the Budget Committee by September 11. The official report directs up to $60 billion to Armed Services, $13 billion to the Intelligence Committee, $12 billion to Agriculture and $10 billion to House Administration over fiscal years 2027 through 2036. That last $10 billion is the lane Republicans intend to use for election security. The House Administration Committee would write the details, including the effort to require documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration and photo identification at the polls. The House Budget Committee approved the resolution 20-14 on July 16. Its official release described that vote as the first step toward supporting troops, strengthening the food supply and securing elections. That committee vote approved broad instructions, not the final policy text. Agriculture, Armed Services, Intelligence and House Administration must now decide how to use their assigned budget room and transmit those recommendations back to the Budget Committee. Monday’s Rules vote was the next step. It placed the framework on a path to floor debate while preserving the next round of policy fights for the committees that hold jurisdiction and must turn spending ceilings into legislation. The full House is the next battlefield for Johnson’s narrow majority. The two remaining traps First, Johnson still has to hold together a narrow Republican majority. Fiscal conservatives have objected to the package’s new deficit spending, and a Rules Committee win does not guarantee enough votes on the House floor. Second, the Senate parliamentarian can remove provisions whose budget impact is judged to be merely incidental. That Byrd Rule review could determine how much of the SAVE America Act survives in the final package. The House Budget Committee account of Monday’s hearing shows Chairman Jodey Arrington making the case for urgency before the midterms. He argued that voter ID and citizenship safeguards are necessary to restore public confidence in elections. Arrington also acknowledged what tonight’s vote actually unlocks: a process. The instructed committees still have to write policy, the House and Senate must pass the same final reconciliation bill, and President Trump must sign it. His testimony tied the election provisions to defense and farm support, presenting the package as a closing-window push before November rather than a routine budget exercise with no political clock attached. That is a long and politically dangerous road. But the road is now open. For months, Republicans have said the Senate’s 60-vote threshold made the SAVE America Act impossible to deliver without Democratic cooperation. Johnson has now put a different route on the table, and the first gate did not stop him. If House Republicans stay united and write language the Senate cannot strip, the blockade could finally crack. If they cannot, Monday night’s win will be remembered as one more promising procedural vote that never became law. The next vote will tell us which direction this is heading. This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here. The post BREAKING: Speaker Johnson’s Plan To Break SAVE Act Blockade Put To The Test appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.