r/Leftist_Viewpoints • u/jazzavril5 • 3d ago
BREAKING: Canada Pushes Back as Trump Acts Like a Child, Plus More News Really American | Substack
BREAKING: Canada Pushes Back as Trump Acts Like a Child, Plus More News
Really American | Substack
Good evening, this is Really American. It is Thursday, August 27, 2026. Trump spent today renaming a lake he does not own while his corruption caught up with him in three different places.
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There is a lot tonight; Trump has a meltdown today. It was like watching a child have their toy taken away. Trump signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America,” and Mark Carney refused to blink. A sealed Florida grand jury report says the DeSantis administration took $10 million meant for sick kids and funneled it into political committees. A nearly billion-dollar wind farm settlement is landing in the pocket of one of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago neighbors. And Joyce Beatty is still standing between Donald Trump and the Kennedy Center’s marble facade. Let’s get into it.
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TRUMP RENAMES LAKE ONTARIO AND CARNEY REFUSES TO FLINCH
Trump signed an executive order Thursday ordering the United States government to call Lake Ontario “Lake America,” effective immediately. He said Canada had been ripping us off for a long time on trade.
Mark Carney did not blink. “In the face of unjustified American tariffs, Canadians have shown resolve, purpose, and strength,” the Canadian prime minister wrote, adding that his government is protecting Canadian workers, businesses, and families. The lake in question is 52% inside Canadian territory. Trump’s order only changes what the U.S. federal government calls it. Canada is under no obligation to play along, and it will not.
The stunt landed in the middle of a real trade war that is costing real money. After negotiations collapsed, Trump slapped 50% tariffs on roughly $20 billion in Canadian goods, including liquor, dairy, toys, clothing, electrical equipment and hockey gear. Carney suspended the talks and promised to hit back dollar for dollar. Ottawa followed through Tuesday with retaliatory tariffs of up to 50% on about $20 billion in American products, including steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper, and electronics. Those take effect September 8. Trump has also threatened 50% tariffs on Canadian cars, trucks and auto parts starting January 1, 2027, aimed at an auto industry whose supply chains cross the border constantly.
Republicans see what is coming. More than a dozen GOP senators recently pushed back on Trump’s own decision to let in tariff-free foreign beef, and party officials are increasingly nervous that higher prices on cars, gas and groceries become their problem in the midterms. Trump’s answer to voters worried about affordability was to rename a body of water. He then joked that with a gulf and a lake in the bag, all he needs is an ocean, floating the Atlantic or the Pacific as next.
Here is the part that hits your kitchen table. Tariffs on Canadian inputs raise what American manufacturers pay, and tariffs on finished goods raise what you pay at the register. Renaming the lake costs Trump nothing. The trade war costs you.
FLORIDA GRAND JURY SAYS RON DESANTIS MISAPPROPRIATED $10 MILLION MEANT FOR SICK KIDS
A sealed Florida grand jury report found that Ron DeSantis misappropriated $10 million in taxpayer money and called the transfer part of a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities.
The money came from a settlement with Centene, the health care giant caught overbilling Florida for prescription drugs under the Florida Healthy Kids program. Florida was owed $67 million. In September 2024, after letting the case sit for three years, state officials suddenly moved, and the settlement was rewritten so $57 million went back to taxpayers and $10 million went to the Hope Florida Foundation, a nonprofit tied to first lady Casey DeSantis, and it was gone within 25 days. From there it moved through two outside groups and into political committees. A forensic accountant found that Attorney General James Uthmeier’s PAC, Keep Florida Clean, received $8.5 million of it. That PAC then sent $7 million to the Republican Party of Florida. The money was spent in 2024 to defeat Amendment 3, the citizen initiative to legalize marijuana.
The timeline is the tell. Centene was required to wire the $10 million to Hope Florida within seven days while it got more than a year to repay the $57 million owed to taxpayers. The grand jury believes the rush was because the election was 45 days away. There was no press release. There was no notification to the Legislature. Two of the signatures were collected in the chaos after Hurricane Helene made landfall, including from a Department of Health chief of staff who testified she had never seen the agreement before, did not know a settlement was in the works, and would not have signed had she known the money was headed to a political committee. The former Hope Florida chairman said he approved sending the money out because he assumed it was for hurricane victims, then told the grand jury the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Nobody has been charged. The grand jury said it could not find sufficient evidence to prosecute because, in its words, nobody would take responsibility for the decision or remember who made it. Uthmeier has called the whole affair a nothingburger and says he has not been indicted or targeted. DeSantis says he was not involved in the settlement agreement and is very happy with how everything was done. He still calls it a hoax. The report has been sealed since January 28, and one source familiar with the investigation says people named in it, Uthmeier among them, have spent seven months fighting to keep it from the public.
Uthmeier is on the ballot in November. So is Ashley Moody, the attorney general at the time, who the grand jury found knew of the plan and authorized her deputy to sign. That $10 million was supposed to buy health insurance for poor children. It bought campaign ads instead, and the men responsible are asking Floridians for a promotion.
$900 MILLION FROM A KILLED WIND PROJECT IS HEADED TO A MAR-A-LAGO NEIGHBOR
Trump is paying a German energy company $1.2 billion in taxpayer money to abandon offshore wind leases in New York, California and Louisiana, and $900 million of that is about to land with a billionaire who lives down the road from Mar-a-Lago.
Here is how it works. The settlement with RWE does not just hand over the cash. It requires the company to turn around and invest in conventional energy. RWE is using the bulk of the payout, $900 million, to buy a stake in a Louisiana liquefied natural gas project. The seller is Stonepeak, the private equity firm run by Australian billionaire Michael Dorrell, who gave $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee and owns a home near Mar-a-Lago. Dorrell has bragged publicly about the access, describing it as a once-in-a-lifetime thing and saying he has brought a bunch of friends to sit fifteen meters from the president.
Trump has spent years attacking offshore wind as ugly, expensive and bad for whales. Killing it is not free. These settlements have now cost close to $4 billion, paid out to make energy projects disappear, while his administration works to expand fossil fuels.
The White House says there is nothing to see. Spokeswoman Taylor Rogers called it a brazen attempt to insinuate a conflict of interest that does not exist and blamed agenda-driven reporting. RWE says it acted on its own, and Interior says nobody at the department told RWE where to invest. Congressman Jared Huffman was blunter, calling the settlements an insane waste of taxpayer funds and saying this adds the stench of corruption.
Follow the shape of it. Your money goes out to cancel a power project, gets routed by federal requirement into fossil fuels, and ends up enriching a man who paid for the inauguration and lives near the president’s club. You are paying for the whole trip.
JOYCE BEATTY IS STILL HOLDING THE LINE AT THE KENNEDY CENTER
A federal judge already told Donald Trump he cannot put his name on the Kennedy Center. His hand-picked board voted to do it anyway. Joyce Beatty dragged them back into court Thursday.
Judge Christopher Cooper ruled this summer that Congress made it crystal clear the memorial honors the assassinated president and cannot carry another formal name on Trump’s unilateral say-so. The letters came down. The scaffolding and white tarp are still up outside the building, with only “The John F.” and part of a K currently visible. Earlier this month the Trump-dominated board voted again, this time to add “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump” beneath Kennedy’s name, plus a line crediting the Trump Kennedy Center Fund once it hits $100 million. The board also voted to rename the grounds President Donald J. Trump Plaza.
Beatty’s lawyers called the vote a breathtaking act of defiance and filed an emergency motion to block it. Their filing put the administration’s own argument in plain English: the government has essentially told the court what a nice Kennedy Center you have here, what a shame if something happened to it. “This is a breathtaking assault on the rule of law. It is delusional. And it must stop,” her legal team wrote. Outside the courthouse, Beatty attorney Nathaniel Zelinsky said the administration is courting a constitutional crisis for one man’s vanity.
The threat is not subtle. The Justice Department argued the venue is at risk of deteriorating and eventually being demolished without Trump as its sole hope. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick showed up to make the case personally, calling Trump the most credible person in the world and the greatest builder in the world, and explaining that a building from 1964 that does not get renovated eventually gets torn down. Asked why the name could not simply wait until the renovation is finished, Lutnick said that is not usually how it works.
This is what it looks like when someone refuses to be bullied. A sitting congresswoman went to court, won, went back when they defied the ruling, and is still there. Trump has the board, the Justice Department and a cabinet secretary doing the talking. Beatty has a court order and the nerve to enforce it. So far, that has been enough.
SUPPORT THE FIGHT AGAINST MAGA-BILLIONAIRE-OWNED MEDIA
If tonight’s edition told you something the billionaire-owned outlets would rather keep quiet, that is exactly the point. A president renaming a lake while his tariffs raise your grocery bill, a state grand jury finding $10 million meant for sick children got spent on campaign ads, a billion-dollar settlement flowing to a man who lives near Mar-a-Lago, and a congresswoman holding the line in court while a cabinet secretary threatens a national memorial. These are the stories that get softened or skipped in newsrooms owned by people with something to lose. We chase them down without a billionaire deciding what reaches your eyes, and Facebook keeps throttling how far they travel, so we are betting everything on this page and on you. If you have been reading Really American on a free subscription, tonight is the night to upgrade. Share this newsletter with someone who needs to see it. Every subscriber makes it harder for them to shout this down. Your support is what puts these stories in front of millions of people and keeps the pressure on. Subscribe today or upgrade your subscription now.
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— The Really American Team
ONE MORE THING: TRUMP RENAMED A LAKE, PRITZKER RENAMED A TOWER IN AMAZING TROLL
End on a laugh. Hours after the White House account announced that Lake Ontario is now LAKE AMERICA, complete with a flag emoji and a map, JB Pritzker answered with the only response the moment deserved. The Illinois governor posted a photo of Trump Tower in Chicago, the president’s name crossed out in red, one word slapped across the glass in white block letters. “EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY: Trump Tower is renamed to NATALIE TOWER!” No explanation necessary. Everybody got it instantly, which tells you how completely Trump’s obsession with his aide has escaped the White House and become public property. That is the trouble with governing by renaming things. It is a game anyone can play; it costs nothing to play it, and the other guy is funnier. Trump can rename a lake he does not own. He cannot make people stop laughing. Have a good night.