26 AUG 26 SITREP

• Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sanctions against several transnational far-left terrorist networks, leading with action against the Autistici/Inventati (AI) Collective, an Italy-based hacker cell providing far-left extremists with encrypted communications, web hosting, and operational infrastructure deliberately concealed from law enforcement.
• Rose City Antifa, based in Portland, Oregon, used the Autistici/Inventati Collective’s Italy-hosted platform to dox ICE agents by publishing their home addresses and to coordinate attacks on U.S. Border Patrol helicopters using green lasers, an operation the network internally called “laser tag,” resulting in federal indictments against participants.
• The Autistici/Inventati Collective’s websites contained sabotage techniques, arson guides, infrastructure vulnerability maps targeting bridges, pipelines, the electric grid, and U.S. military logistics centers, along with campus layout maps for venues hosting conservative speakers, with operational content translated into Italian, Portuguese, French, and Spanish.
• The sanctions extend penalties to any individual or organization that shelters, conducts business with, or allows the Autistici/Inventati Collective to operate financially or digitally, and the network was additionally linked to the Stop Cop City campaign conducted outside Atlanta, Georgia.

• While the State Department was moving against the Autistici/Inventati Collective, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent separately threatened sanctions on Monday against any country refusing to sever economic ties with Iran, a warning broadly understood as targeting China, which is Iran’s largest oil consumer and one of its biggest trading partners, despite China not being named explicitly.
• China pushed back immediately, with its Foreign Ministry spokesman stating that China would take all necessary measures to firmly safeguard its own rights and interests, asserting that China-Iran economic cooperation conforms with international law and must not be disrupted or undermined.
• Closer to home, the Trump administration is simultaneously facing intense opposition from American ranchers and the American Farm Bureau Federation over a plan to temporarily eliminate tariffs on more than 660 million pounds of imported ground beef, to be sold at 25 percent below U.S. market prices, at a time when the domestic beef herd fell to a record low in July.
• Compounding those domestic pressures, the Trump administration is preparing what has been described as the largest mass visa revocation in U.S. history, with up to 200,000 visas potentially on the chopping block.

• Decision Desk projected Darline Graham as the winner of the South Carolina Republican Senate runoff on Tuesday, defeating Congressman Ralph Norman after neither candidate cleared the 50 percent threshold required to avoid a runoff in the initial primary vote weeks earlier.
• Darline Graham was appointed to fill her late brother Senator Lindsey Graham’s seat in Congress to finish out his term, received the endorsement of President Donald Trump, and had Trump’s PAC MAGA Inc. spend over $827,000 on voter phone calls and texts on her behalf in the get out the vote effort against Norman.
• At a rally in Myrtle Beach earlier in August, Trump stated “I’m doing this to honor Lindsey, that’s why I’m here, so Darline, we got to win that race,” underscoring the personal and political weight the administration placed on delivering the seat to Graham over Norman.
• Darline Graham now advances to the general election where she will face Democrat Annie Andrews, who won her primary in June, in a race that will determine who permanently holds the South Carolina Senate seat.