Wednesday Reads

Posted: December 10, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Good Day!!

I’m still in my “avoiding the news” phase. Of course, I can’t help hearing about big events–I’m just not spending huge swaths of time reading Substacks and social media posts. Unread emails pile up as I fritter away my time indulging my guilty TV pleasures–animal shows and true crime dramas. So this morning I’ve been looking around to see what’s been happening while I was checked out. Here are the stories that grabbed my attention.

Hopeful Signs?

Democrats are continuing to do well in off-year elections. Yesterday, there were big wins in Florida and Georgia.

Kimberly Leonard at Politico: Miami elects first woman mayor, marking first win by Democrat in 28 years.

MIAMI — Democrats can now add a major city in Donald Trump’s home state — and one set to host his future presidential library — to its list of off-cycle election wins.

In a Tuesday runoff, Miamians elected Eileen Higgins as mayor, the first woman in the city’s history to hold the job and the first Democrat in 28 years. Higgins, a former county commissioner, defeated Republican Emilio González, an ex-city manager who had the endorsement of Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis, with 60 percent of the vote.

Eileen Higgins

“Miami chose a new direction,” Higgins said during her victory speech at the Miami Woman’s Club. “You chose competence over chaos, results over excuses and a city government that finally works for you.”

The election could boost messaging for Florida Democrats, who’ve faced setbacks in recent election cycles and have a 1.4 million registered voter disadvantage in this former swing state.

“Tonight’s victory shows that the pendulum is swinging in our favor and that when we commit to relentless, year-round organizing and invest in a long-term strategic field program, we can, in fact, win,” FDP Chair Nikki Fried said in a statement Tuesday night.

Ethan Cohen at CNN: Georgia Democrat Eric Gisler flips a state House seat in district Trump won by double digits, CNN projects.

Democrats continued their run of successes in special elections by flipping a state House seat in Georgia Tuesday, according to a projection from the CNN Decision Desk.

The Democratic victory, in a district that voted for President Donald Trump by about 12 percentage points last year, comes ahead of next year’s critical midterms, when Georgians will vote in closely watched races for Senate and governor.

Eric Gisler

Eric Gisler, a Democrat who owns a local olive oil store, will defeat Republican Mack “Dutch” Guest in the 121st House District, in the northeastern part of the state, near the college town of Athens.

Between regularly scheduled elections in Virginia and New Jersey and special elections held on newly redrawn maps in Mississippi, Democrats flipped about 20 state legislative seats on Election Day last month. Those victories came after Democrats flipped two seats in Iowa and one in Pennsylvania during special elections earlier in the year.

Republicans still control a significant majority in the Georgia House, but Tuesday’s results come just a month after Democrats won two statewide elections to flip two seats on the state’s Public Service Commission….

The Democratic Party of Georgia congratulated Gisler in a statement Tuesday evening, “This isn’t just a win for Georgia Democrats – it’s a win for every family in Oconee and Clarke Counties who has been struggling to get ahead under 22 years of failed Republican leadership.”

Trump’s “Affordability” Speech in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania

Matt Viser at The Washington Post: At the first stop on his affordability tour, Trump mocks affordability.

He mocked the word “affordability,” touted how high the stock market had risen and said Americans didn’t need so many pencils. He launched into a number of digressions to disparage the country of Somalia, the concept of climate change and the news media in the back of the room.

Trump spoke from a 1,200-capacity ballroom at the Mount Airy Resort and Casino in the Pocono Mountains for what White House officials have suggested would be a kickoff to promote Trump’s economic policies — and an attempt to wrangle an issue that has become a political liability ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Instead, the 90-minute speech was a greatest hits of his campaign trail appearances — complimenting the power of his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and “the lips that don’t stop” of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt — with occasional nods to the current economic anxieties. He promoted his trade policies, without speaking to the impact they’ve had on consumer prices, and he promised lower energy costs.

“We inherited the highest prices ever, and we’re bringing them down,” he said several times.

“We’re getting inflation — we’re crushing it, and you’re getting much higher wages,” he said. “I mean, the only thing that is really going up big, it’s called the stock market and your 401(k).”

While suggesting prices were no longer going up, Trump also ridiculed Democrats for suggesting that voters cared about affordability, an issue that was a focus of their successful campaigns last month in New Jersey, Virginia and New York City.

“They said, ‘Oh, he doesn’t realize prices are higher.’ Prices are coming down very substantially,” Trump said. “But they have a new word. You know, they always have a hoax. The new word is affordability. So they look at the camera and they say, ‘This election is all about affordability.’”

Trump talks affordability in PA.

The election may very well be about people’s ability to afford basics–food, clothing, and housing. Trump has never had to worry about those things, so he mocks people who do.

Later, he attempted to clarify.

“I can’t say affordability is a hoax because I agree the prices were too high. So I can’t go to call it a hoax because they’ll misconstrue that,” he said. “But they use the word affordability. And that’s the only word they say. Affordability. And that’s their only word. They say, ‘Affordability.’ And everyone says, ‘Oh, that must mean Trump has high prices.’ No. Our prices are coming down tremendously from the highest prices in the history of our country.”

Trump also returned to a comment he made earlier in his presidency, saying that Americans needed to go without.

“You know, you can give up certain products. You can give up pencils,” he said, suggesting that he was focused on promoting American-made steel while China was focused on providing multiple pencils to its citizens.

“You always need steel. You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter,” he said. “Two or three is nice, but you don’t need 37 dolls. So, we’re doing things right. We’re running this country right well.”

“Affordability” is another word like “groceries” to Trump–words for things outside his own experience. He doesn’t have to worry about getting enough to eat or staying warm in his home–so other people shouldn’t care about those things either. Just deal with it while he has fun with his tariffs.

Paul Krugman at his Substack: Trump Says That You Are the Problem. Everything is perfect. Why aren’t you grateful?

Last night Donald Trump gave an important speech on the economy in Pennsylvania — supposedly in a working-class area, although the actual venue was a luxury casino resort. The event was initially touted as the start of an “affordability tour,” the first of a series of speeches intended to reverse Trump’s cratering approval on his handling of inflation and the economy. A number of news analyses suggested that he would use the occasion to blame Democrats for the economy’s troubles.

King Trump doesn’t care about your affordability concerns.

That was never going to happen. Trump did, of course, take many swipes at Joe Biden, as well as attacking immigrants, women and windmills. But to blame Democrats for the economy’s problems he would have to admit that the Trump economy has problems. And the speech was important because it revealed that he won’t make any such admission, and will continue to gaslight the public.

On Monday Politico interviewed Trump, asking him, among other things, what grade he would give the current economy. His answer: “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus.”

In fact, until very recently Trump wouldn’t even accept the reality that ordinary Americans don’t share his triumphalism. When Fox News’s Laura Ingraham asked him a month ago why people are anxious about the economy, Trump replied

“I don’t know they are saying that. The polls are fake. We have the greatest economy we’ve ever had.”

Scott Bessent, billionaire

Since then Trump and his minions seem to have come around to admitting that Americans are, in fact, unhappy with the state of the economy. But if the economy is A+++++, why don’t people see it? The problem can’t possibly lie with him — so it must lie with you. “The American people don’t know how good they have it.”

I put that line in quotes because it isn’t a caricature or a paraphrase. It is, in fact, literally what Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, said the other day:

“We’ve made a lot of gains, but remember, we’ve got this embedded inflation from the Biden years, where mainstream media, whether it’s Greg Ip at the Wall Street Journal, toxic Paul Krugman at New York Times or former Vice Chair, Alan Blinder, all said it was a vibecession. The American people don’t know how good they have it.”

Krugman’s response:

I may not be a political strategist, but I don’t think “You’re all a bunch of ingrates” is a winning message. It was, however, really the only message Trump could deliver, given his utter lack of empathy or humility.

At this point I could bombard you with a lot of data showing that the economy is not, in fact, A+++++. But it isn’t a disaster area, at least not yet. So why are Americans feeling so down? The main culprit is Trump himself.

First, during the 2024 campaign Trump repeatedly promised to bring consumer prices way down beginning on “day one.” We’re now 11 months in, prices are still rising, and voters who believed him feel, with reason, that they were lied to. Last night Trump insisted that prices are, in fact, coming way down. Again, “Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?” is a self-destructive political strategy.

Second, Trump would be in much better political shape right now if he had basically continued Biden’s policies, with only a few cosmetic changes. When he took office inflation was on a declining trajectory. Consumer sentiment was relatively favorable at the start of 2025. Americans were still angry about high prices, but the inflation surge of 2021-3 had happened on Biden’s watch and was receding into the past. My guess is that many voters would have accepted Trump’s claims that high prices were Democrats’ fault and given him the benefit of the doubt about the economy’s future if he had simply done nothing drastic and left policies mostly as they were.

Instead, he brought chaos: Massive and massively unpopular tariffs, DOGE disruptions, masked ICE agents grabbing people off the street, saber-rattling and war crimes in the Caribbean. Many swing voters, I believe, supported Trump out of nostalgia for the relative calm that prevailed before Covid struck. They didn’t think they were voting for nonstop political PTSD.

And there’s more to come. Health insurance costs are about to spike, because Republicans refuse to extend Biden-era subsidies. Inflation may pick up in the next few months as retailers, who have so far absorbed much of the cost of Trump’s tariffs, begin passing them on to consumers.

Chris Cameron at The New York Times: Trump’s Speech on Economy Veers Into an Anti-Immigrant Tirade.

In a speech that the White House billed as an address on the economy, amid a backlash driven in part by Mr. Trump’s sweeping tariffs, Mr. Trump veered between assurances that life was better than ever under his administration and blaming immigrants for the country’s economic woes.

Mr. Trump revived what had been an effective campaign message, promising that sending immigrants home would mean “more jobs, better wages and higher income for American citizens,” though the early stages of his mass deportation campaign have so far coincided with widespread economic anxiety.

He earned raucous cheers from his supporters as he spoke of “reverse migration” and trumpeted what he called a “permanent pause” on immigration from “hellholes like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia and many other countries.”

Soon after, a member of the crowd yelled out a crude term that Mr. Trump used during his first administration to disparage Haiti and some nations in Africa. The president laughed.

“I didn’t say ‘shithole,’ you did!” Mr. Trump replied with a grin. He then recounted his use of the term at a White House meeting in 2018 to describe countries that he was balking at accepting immigrants from. Mr. Trump had then denied saying that after it was publicly reported. Nearly six years later, he appeared proud of the remark.

Quiet, Piggy!

Throughout the speech, Mr. Trump doubled down on a barrage of incendiary attacks that he has unleashed against immigrants since the shooting of two National Guard members near the White House last month. The day after the shooting, Mr. Trump floated the possibility of stripping naturalized American citizens of their citizenship (which is only done in rare cases) and vowed to deport all immigrants that he saw as “non-compatible with Western civilization.”

During his xenophobic tirade, Mr. Trump made little distinction between unauthorized migrants and those who followed all the correct procedures to enter the country and eventually become American citizens. He described Somali immigrants as lazy, murderous and “garbage,” and said the home countries of many immigrants were “filthy, dirty, disgusting.”

Quiet, Piggy!! He is disgusting.

Politico polled Americans on what they really think of Trump’s economy. Erin Doherty writes: New poll paints a grim picture of a nation under financial strain.

Americans are struggling with affordability pressures that are squeezing everything from their everyday necessities to their biggest-ticket expenses

Nearly half of Americans said they find groceries, utility bills, health care, housing and transportation difficult to afford, according to The POLITICO Poll conducted last month by Public First. The results paint a grim portrait of spending constraints: More than a quarter, 27 percent, said they have skipped a medical check-up because of costs within the last two years, and 23 percent said they have skipped a prescription dose for the same reason.

The strain is also reshaping how Americans spend their free time. More than a third — 37 percent — said they could not afford to attend a professional sports event with their family or friends, and almost half — 46 percent — said they could not pay for a vacation that involves air travel.

Trump insists that “prices are all coming down,” as he told Burns, but the results pose a challenge for Trump and the Republican Party ahead of the 2026 midterms, with even some of the president’s own voters showing signs that their patience with high costs is wearing thin.

POLITICO reporters covering a variety of beats have spent the past few weeks poring over the poll results. We asked some of them to unpack the data for us and tell us what stood out most.

Read about these specific findings at the link.

Trump/Hegseth’s Boat Strikes

Damien Cave, Edward Wong, and Maria Abi-Habib at The New York Times (gift link): Inside the Pentagon’s Scramble to Deal With Boat Strike Survivors.

The Pentagon was in a bind. The military had plucked two survivors from the Caribbean Sea in mid-October after striking a boat that U.S. officials said was carrying drugs, and it needed to figure out what to do with them.

On a call with counterparts at the State Department, Pentagon lawyers floated an idea. They asked whether the two survivors could be put into a notorious prison in El Salvador to which the Trump administration had sent hundreds of Venezuelan deportees, three officials said.

The State Department lawyers were stunned, one official said, and rejected the idea. The survivors ended up being repatriated to their home countries of Colombia and Ecuador.

A little under two weeks later, on Oct. 29, Pentagon officials convened another session about boat strike survivors, a video conference involving dozens of American diplomats from across the Western Hemisphere. The message was that any rescued survivors should be sent back to their home countries or to a third country, said three other officials, who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Behind that policy was a quieter goal: to ensure survivors did not end up in the U.S. judicial system, where court cases could force the administration to show evidence justifying President Trump’s military campaign in the region.

The previously unreported calls demonstrate the haphazard and sometimes tense nature of the process within the Trump administration to weigh what to do with the survivors of U.S. attacks on boats that the military asserts — without presenting evidence — are drug-smuggling vessels posing an immediate threat to Americans.

Pentagon officials largely kept State Department counterparts in the dark about strike operations, then scrambled to try to enlist diplomats to help deal with survivors, whom military officials referred to by specific terms that included “distressed mariners.” That phrase is usually used in a peacetime and civilian context.

The talks took place after the first attack on Sept. 2, when the U.S. military killed two survivors with a second strike. Pentagon officials have not fully explained the process for handling survivors to other agencies or Congress, even as the campaign has continued, killing at least 87 people in 22 attacks.

Use the gift link to read the rest.

Haley Britzky at CNN: 3 separate US strikes on alleged drug boats have initially left survivors. Each time they’ve been treated differently

As the US military has undertaken a campaign of attacks against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, at least five people have survived initial strikes ending up in the water after explosions killed fellow crew members and disabled their ships.

But what happened next to the survivors varied greatly – two were detained by the US Navy only to be returned to their home countries, one was left to float in the ocean and is presumed dead, and two more have been at the center of intense scrutiny in recent weeks following reporting that the US military conducted a second strike killing them as they clung to their flipped and damaged boat on September 2.

The contrast in treatment has happened while policy on how the military will handle survivors remains steady, according to defense officials….

Democratic lawmakers have demanded answers about the follow-up strike with some suggesting that the US military may have violated international law by killing the survivors.

Last week, Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill in closed-door meetings to explain the attack. Bradley was the commander of Joint Special Operations Command at the time of the strike and oversaw the attack; Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the White House have said Bradley was ultimately the official who directed the follow-on strikes, and that they support his decision.

Bradley told lawmakers he ordered a second strike to destroy the remains of the vessel, killing the two survivors, on the grounds that it appeared that part of the vessel remained afloat because it still held cocaine, CNN has reported. The survivors could hypothetically have floated to safety, been rescued, and carried on with trafficking the drugs, the logic went.

People briefed on the follow-up strike said they were concerned that it could violate the law of armed conflict, which prohibits the execution of an enemy combatant who is “hors de combat,” or taken out of the fight due to injury or surrender.

Read more at CNN.

More Interesting Stories to Check Out

Media Matters: Right-wing media are poised to escalate attacks on women as MAGA cracks emerge.

AP: Justice Department can unseal records from Epstein’s 2019 sex trafficking case, judge says.

CNN: Third federal judge grants request to unseal Jeffrey Epstein-related court records.

The New York Times: Judge Says Trump Must End Guard Deployment in Los Angeles.

The New York Times: U.S. Plans to Scrutinize Foreign Tourists’ Social Media History.

Politico: Trump aides and allies float potential Noem successors as speculation grows over her tenure.

Boston.com: Rümeysa Öztürk can return to research at Tufts after judge orders reinstatement of student immigration record.

That’s it for me today. What’s on your mind?

Lazy Caturday Reads: Slow News Day–Just Kidding.

Posted: December 6, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

By Susan McLaughlin

I wonder if we will ever see another slow news day. Before Trump came on the political scene, I can recall days when I struggled to find interesting stories to post. It has been a decade now since that happened. Even when Biden was president, Trump managed to dominate the news.  I’m just so sick and tired of him. But he will continue to be the top story even if Democrats take over the House and Senate next year. If that happens, he’ll be impeached and–I hope–prosecuted. If only he would just go away!

It’s the weekend, and the news is once again overwhelming. I’m going to begin with a couple of immigration stories from my home territory.

Sarah Betancourt at WGBH: Immigrants kept from Faneuil Hall citizenship ceremony as feds crackdown nationwide.

Becoming a U.S. citizen takes years and involves immigrants acquiring a green card, extensive interviews, background checks, classes and a citizenship test. The naturalization ceremony is the final step to the process, where the oath of allegiance and a citizenship certificate are granted.

Immigrants approved to be naturalized went to Faneuil Hall Thursday — known as the country’s cradle of liberty — for that long-awaited moment to pledge allegiance to the United States. But instead, as they lined up, some were told by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials that they couldn’t proceed due to their countries of origin.

The same situation is playing out at naturalization events across the country as USCIS directed its employees to halt adjudicating all immigration pathways for people from 19 countries deemed to be “high risk”.

“One of our clients said that she had gone to her oath ceremony because she hadn’t received the cancellation notice in time,” said Gail Breslow, executive director of Project Citizenship. “She showed up as scheduled, and when she arrived, officers were asking everyone what country they were from, and if they said a certain country, they were told to step out of line and that their oath ceremonies were canceled.”

That client, a Haitian woman in her 50s, has had a green card since the early 2000s and started working with Project Citizenship in January. She declined an interview request through Breslow.

“People are devastated and they’re frightened,” Breslow told GBH News. “People were plucked out of line. They didn’t cancel the whole ceremony.”

She said many clients with upcoming ceremonies and USCIS appointments have received cancellations via an online portal. She shared an example of the notices they’re receiving, which provide no further guidance or instructions.

“One person was, you know, asking … what did I do wrong? Why is this happening to me? And, you know, needed to be reassured that it wasn’t anything she had done. This wasn’t her fault,” Breslow said.

Read more at the link. This is so heartbreaking. Trump is destroying our country’s image around the world. I doubt if we can recover from his destruction in my lifetime.

Man and Cat by Stu Morris 2020

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about the arrest of the mother of White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt’s nephew. Her name is Bruna Caroline Ferreira, and she is still in ICE custody in Louisiana.

Here’s an update on this story published at WBUR on Thursday: Brother of White House press secretary Leavitt had contentious custody battle with ex, now in ICE custody.

PLAISTOW, N.H. — In this rural town just across the Massachusetts line, the Leavitt family runs a used-car dealership, with hulking work trucks lined up in the front lot. Inside the lobby, a giant TV blares Fox News, and a framed photo features President Donald Trump, posing with owners Bob and Erin Leavitt.

A New Hampshire family once best known for selling cars and ice cream, the Leavitts were thrust into the national spotlight this year when their 27-year-old daughter, Karoline, was named White House press secretary. Ten months later, the administration’s war on illegal immigration landed in the Leavitts’ backyard.

Bruna Ferreira — a Brazilian immigrant who shares an 11-year-old child with Karoline’s brother Michael Leavitt — was arrested by ICE in mid-November. Ferreira, 33, remains in custody in Louisiana. The boy lives with his father in New Hampshire.

Ferreira’s sister and lawyer had claimed there was no animosity between Ferreira and the Leavitts. But court records, police reports and family text chains reviewed by WBUR tell a vastly different story — one of a bitter custody battle, years-old allegations of a threat to call immigration authorities, and concerns for the well-being of the child when his mother was staying in a vacant mansion in Cohasset.

The arrest, first reported by WBUR, has sparked questions about whether the Leavitts used their inroads to the White House to put ICE onto Ferreira’s trail. Karoline Leavitt has denied any involvement in the arrest. And Michael Leavitt, 35, told WBUR on Thursday that neither he nor anyone else in his family called ICE on the mother of his son: “Absolutely not,” he said in a text response to questions.

ICE accused Ferreira of overstaying a visa that ran out in 1999 and of a battery arrest. Ferreira’s lawyer has said he’s unaware of crimes on her record. He said she’d been unable to renew the legal status she had under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Leavitt’s brother was asked about this.

Asked whether Karoline Leavitt would do anything to help Ferreira get released, Michael Leavitt told WBUR, “I would never ask my sister to abuse her government position to help anyone, including me — nor would I ever assume she would do so.”

Instead, Leavitt said, he and his father urged Ferreira’s sister to get her to self-deport. Leavitt said by agreeing to be deported — rather than being forced to leave through the removal process — she could one day return to the U.S.

The sister, Graziela Dos Santos Rodrigues, said she called Karoline Leavitt after the arrest. She still hasn’t heard back.

There quite a bit of interesting detail in the story about the relationship between Leavitt’s brother and his ex-wife. Among other things, Ferreira claims that Leavitt owes $70,000 in child support. I would not be at all surprised if Ferreira was specifically targeted by the White House.

Prisac Nicholai, Self, Portrait with My Cat

It’s beginning to look like Pete Hegseth may be in trouble following the uproar about the double strike on a “drug” boat in September, reported by The Washington Post and the recent report on “Signalgate,” the scandal about Hegseth using Signal to discuss top secret information.

Joseph Gedeon at The Guardian: Pressure grows on ‘reckless’ Hegseth as twin scandals engulf Pentagon chief.

Pete Hegseth is facing the most serious crisis of his tenure as defense secretary, engulfed by allegations of war crimes in the Caribbean and a blistering inspector general report accusing him of mishandling classified military intelligence. Yet despite the long list of trouble and as lawmakers from both parties call for his resignation, Hegseth shows no signs of stepping down and still holds Donald Trump’s support.

The twin crises have engulfed the former Fox News personality in separate but overlapping allegations that lawmakers, policy experts and former officials say reveal a pattern of dangerous recklessness at the helm of the Pentagon. Democratic legislators have reignited calls for his ouster after revelations that survivors clinging to wreckage from a September boat strike were deliberately killed in a “double-tap” attack, while a defense department investigation released on Thursday concluded he violated Pentagon policies by sharing sensitive details via the Signal messaging app hours before airstrikes in Yemen.

The most recent controversy comes as the Caribbean campaign centers on the Trump administration’s extrajudicial strikes against suspected drug smugglers, which have killed at least 87 people across 22 attacks since September. Trump has justified the operation as essential to combating fentanyl trafficking, claiming each destroyed vessel saves 25,000 American lives, though factcheckers, former officials and drug policy experts have called this figure absurd, noting that fentanyl primarily enters the United States overland from Mexico, not via Caribbean boats from Venezuela.

The legality of the strikes came under intense scrutiny after the public learned that two men who survived the initial 2 September attack could been seen amid the wreckage when a lethal follow-up strike was ordered. While Hegseth initially dismissed the reporting as fabricated, he later confirmed the basic facts during a cabinet meeting this week, saying he acted in the “fog of war” but “didn’t stick around” to observe the rest of the mission.

Senator Patty Murray, the Democratic vice-chair of the Senate appropriations committee, called for Hegseth’s firing following a bipartisan briefing on the incident on Thursday. “Between overseeing this campaign in the Caribbean, risking US servicemembers’ lives by sharing war plans on Signal, and so much else, it could not be more obvious that Secretary Hegseth is unfit for the role, and it is past time for him to go,” Murray said.

Hegseth is an incompetent moron, but so are all of Trump’s other cabinet members.

Garrett Owen at Salon: “It’s bad”: Lawmakers shocked at video of strike on survivors of alleged drug boat.

Video footage of a highly controversial second strike on an alleged drug boat in September was shown to lawmakers in Washington, shocking and disgusting some, while others defended the decision to target survivors.

Members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate and House Armed Services committees viewed the footage in a closed-door meeting with military brass involved in the strikes. The video showed a suspected drug boat operating in the Caribbean, being struck, and then being struck again as two survivors appeared to cling to wreckage.

“This is a big, big problem, and we need a full investigation,” Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., told The New Republic in an interview. Smith, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, was told that the survivors were “capable of returning to the fight.” He disagrees, though he contends that the boats may have been transporting drugs.

“It looks like two classically shipwrecked people,” Smith said, calling it a “highly questionable decision that these two people on that obviously incapacitated vessel were still in any kind of fight.”

Fellow lawmakers Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., and Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., were appalled by the footage. Himes called it “one of the most troubling scenes I’ve ever seen in my time in public service.” Reed said he was “deeply disturbed” by the video.

“The Department of Defense has no choice but to release the complete, unedited footage of the September 2 strike, as the President has agreed to do,” Reed said.

Some Republican tried to defend the strikes.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. called the second strike “righteous” and “highly lawful and lethal.” Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark., said the strikes were carried out in a “highly professional manner.”

I guess we’ll find out, since Trump has said he would release the complete film of the attacks.

Cats Painting, by Fred Bell

If you’re interested in a deep dive about Hegseth’s situation, here’s a gift link to a piece at the Atlantic by Missy Ryan, Nancy A. Youssef, Sarah Fitzpatrick, and Jonathan Lemire: Pete Hegseth Is Seriously Testing Trump’s ‘No Scalps’ Rule.

The suspected drug traffickers, the lone survivors of a U.S. airstrike, were sprawled on a table-size piece of floating wreckage in the Caribbean for more than 40 minutes. They were unarmed, incommunicado, and adrift as they repeatedly attempted to right what remained of their boat. At one point, the men raised their arms and seemed to signal to the U.S. aircraft above, a gesture some who watched a video of the incident interpreted as a sign of surrender. Then a second explosion finished the men off, leaving only a bloody stain on the surface of the sea. Footage of the two men’s desperate final moments made some viewers nauseated, leading one to nearly vomit. “It was worse than we had been led to believe,” one person told us.

The video was part of a briefing that Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command, gave lawmakers yesterday about the September 2 attack. Bradley told legislators that, after consulting military lawyers, he authorized the follow-on strike, judging that the men still posed a threat because of what they could have done: radioed for help or been picked up with what remained of their cargo of suspected cocaine. The video suggested they didn’t actually do any of that, but Bradley defended his decisions in the first episode of the Trump administration’s newly militarized counternarcotics campaign.

Republicans and Democrats who watched the grainy footage drew different conclusions about whether Bradley’s actions were justified. But many also sounded exasperated that once again they were dealing with controversy sparked by Bradley’s boss, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. And after 10 months of turbulence under Hegseth’s leadership, the Republican-led Congress is now showing signs of exercising its oversight powers.

Read the whole thing at The Atlantic.

Andrew Solender at Axios: Scoop: Democrats call Trump’s bluff on releasing boat strike video.

Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee are pressing Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to release video of U.S. military strikes on an alleged Venezuelan drug boat that have inflamed tensions on Capitol Hill.

Why it matters: The lawmakers are seizing on to President Trump’s own comments this week that he would have “no problem” releasing the footage to the public.

“We look forward to your prompt response and release of this footage to the public, as has already been promised by President Trump,” the lawmakers, led by Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.) wrote in a letter to Hegseth that was obtained by Axios.

“The American people deserve transparency on these attacks,” they wrote, “it is your obligation to release the footage.” [….]

What they’re saying: “We write to request that you release all audio and video footage from the kinetic strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean on September 2, 2025, including the follow-on strikes,” the Democrats wrote in their letter.

“Our concern stems from reports that you, as Secretary of Defense, issued an order to ‘kill everybody,’ followed by additional strikes seeking to kill the two remaining unarmed, shipwrecked individuals.”

The letter was signed by 19 of the 27 Democrats on the Armed Services Committee. Ryan’s office told Axios they reached out to Republicans as well, but none signed.

Yesterday, Dakinikat posted an article from The Economist about the Trump administration’s newly announced “security strategy” which denigrates Europe and praises Russia.

Here’s another analysis of the “strategy” by Anton Troianovski at The New York Times (gift link): Trump’s Security Strategy Focuses on Profit, Not Spreading Democracy.

Latin American countries must grant no-bid contracts to U.S. companies. Taiwan’s significance boils down to semiconductors and shipping lanes. Washington’s “hectoring” of the wealthy Gulf monarchies needs to stop.

The world as seen from the White House is a place where America can use its vast powers to make money.

Михалыч и Васильич», 2023

President Trump has shown all year that his second term would make it a priority to squeeze less powerful countries to benefit American companies. But late Thursday, his administration made that profit-driven approach a core element of its official foreign policy, publishing its long-anticipated update to U.S. national security aims around the world.

The document, known as the National Security Strategy, describes a world in which American interests are far narrower than how prior administrations — even in Mr. Trump’s first term — had portrayed them. Gone is the long-familiar picture of the United States as a global force for freedom, replaced by a country that is focused on reducing migration while avoiding passing judgment on authoritarians, instead seeing them as sources of cash.

“We seek good relations and peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world,” it says, “without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories.”

The National Security Strategy of Mr. Trump’s first term, by contrast, cast the world as a contest “between those who favor repressive systems and those who favor free societies.”

The National Security Strategy has no binding force, and some analysts cautioned against reading too much into it as a guide to future actions given Mr. Trump’s mercurial nature.

But the release of the strategy, which recent presidents have generally updated just once in every term, did carry significance as a snapshot in time. Amid the debates swirling among Republicans over American policy toward the Middle East, Russia, China and elsewhere, the document showed how the administration has appeared to coalesce around a commitment to avoid military entanglements and promote commerce.

In an interview, Dan Caldwell, a former senior adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth who argues in favor of American military restraint, hailed the new strategy as a “true break from the failed bipartisan post-Cold War foreign policy consensus.”

Personally, I don’t see that as a good thing. Use the gift link to read more.

I wonder if Donald Trump has ever been in a grocery store. I really doubt it. He doesn’t seem to understand the lives of ordinary Americans at all. He has no concept of what it’s like to worry about having enough money to pay the bills or to put food on the table. Someone else handles all those things for him. And frankly, he couldn’t care less if children are starving and families can’t pay the rent or mortgage. The only reason he has to care at all is because those people can vote. Right now, he’s making it clear he doesn’t give a shit.

Naftali Bendavid at The Washington Post: Trump struggles to persuade Americans to ignore affordability issues.

President Donald Trump has said drug prices are falling by as much as 1,500 percent, a mathematical impossibility. He has declared himself “the affordability president,” while dismissing the affordability issue as “a con job by the Democrats.”

Trump also vows that good times are coming. He has predicted that gas prices, which now hover around $3 a gallon, will plummet to $2. He has promised Americans $2,000 refund checks from the revenue raised by tariffs. He has suggested that “in the not-too-distant future,” no one will have to pay income tax.

This flurry of sometimes extravagant claims comes amid a growing Republican fear, fueled by recent election results, that high prices could set the stage for a Democratic sweep in next year’s midterms. So far, there is little evidence that Trump’s urgent attempt to shift the economic storyline is working.

By Sergey Levin

“Any Republican who refuses to admit we have an affordability problem is not listening to the American people,” former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) said. “It’s real because the American people think it’s real. I cannot overstate that — in a free country it’s the people who define what is real, not the politicians.” [….]

Trump’s plight is a striking turnabout. In last year’s campaign, Trump scored political points by highlighting Americans’ inflation concerns, and President Joe Biden faced the almost impossible task of convincing voters they were not as bad off as they thought.

Strategists of both parties note that Trump — who has often seemed to defy the laws of politics — is struggling with the affordability issue as he has with few others. The president shrugged off criticism after he accepted a luxury plane from a foreign country, pardoned unsavory figures and demolished a third of the White House, for example — episodes that might be devastating to another politician.

This seems different. Alarm bells have gone off for Republicans since Democrats swept last month’s off-year elections, then performed better than usual in Tuesday’s House race in a bright-red Tennessee district. A Democrat could capture the Miami mayor’s office next Tuesday in heavily Republican Florida.

“He often exists in an alternative reality that many of his followers are happy to follow him into, but the affordability issue is kryptonite for him, because even his most devoted followers know which way is up when it comes to prices,” said Jared Bernstein, who chaired Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers. “He may be able to convince people of his alternative vision in lots of different areas, but not this one.”

Economic issues are going to kill the Republicans in 2026 if Trump continues to live in a fantasy world.

NBC News: ‘People aren’t dumb’: Republicans worry they’re not doing enough on affordability.

Congressional Republicans are starting to publicly and privately sound the alarm about their party’s disjointed strategy to address Americans’ affordability concerns, with some growing increasingly frustrated with President Donald Trump’s sometimes cavalier attitude toward the subject.

While Republicans say the high cost of living is a problem they inherited from President Joe Biden, many GOP lawmakers still think their party needs to sharpen its own message and platform ahead of the midterms — or else it could cost them their tenuous majorities in Congress.

“If we don’t do that, we would be morons, because the economy is very much on people’s minds,” Rep. Tony Gonzales, a Texas Republican, told NBC News. Democrats “failed to really hammer the economy, and it cost them the election,” he added. “If we as Republicans fail to do the same, it wouldn’t surprise me if we had a similar turnout.”

Nearly two dozen Republican senators, House members, strategists and congressional aides shared their concerns about their party’s handling of affordability in interviews with NBC News. Another six acknowledged the issue but said the party will settle on the right strategy to address it.

Their comments come after Democrats have secured wins in many of this year’s elections, with voters citing economic concerns, and as Trump has dismissed the issue as a Democratic “hoax,” rhetoric that has privately frustrated some Republicans.

Read the rest at NBC News.

Those are the stories that captured my interest today. What’s on your mind?

Wednesday Reads: Trump’s Mental and Physical Health and Other News

Posted: December 3, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Good Day!!

Trump sleeps during yesterday’s cabinet meeting.

Nothing is normal in the U.S. anymore. The government is run by incompetent and corrupt people. Most concerning of all is that the “president is not only ignorant and incompetent, but also physically and mentally unstable. In addition, he lacks any sense of morality or empathy for other people.

Yesterday, historian Garrett Graff wrote about this for the second time at his Substack Doomsday Scenario: It’s time to talk about Donald Trump’s health (again).

Back in September, after Donald Trump disappeared from view for days and the internet went wild with rumors he was dead or hospitalized, I wrote about how the press needed to be leading a more serious conversation about Trump’s health and fitness for the presidency than it was having.

In the months since, the evidence has only grown that something serious is afflicting Trump.

And then last night happened.

Overnight, the President of the United States went on what can only be described as an unhinged social media fever dream. He posted on his social media site Truth Social hundreds of times in a short span — somewhere north of 150 times overnight, a wild mix of conspiracy theories, videos, and memes. It was extreme even for him.

During that end-of-August episode, the major questions were about the president’s physical health — his bruised hands and his swollen ankles — and in the months since, there have been more reasons and evidence that some part of the president is not well:

  • He is stumbling, physically, through more of his events. Since August, he appears to be regularly dragging the right side of his body and struggles to walk in a straight line. Just watch this recent video of Trump boarding Marine One, where he appears to be leaning heavily on Melania Trump to stand. And then there was Trump’s Asia trip, where he seemed so lost, wandering aimlessly through a Japanese press event, that the late night shows set it to music.
  • He appears to have fallen asleep in meetings on multiple recent occasions, including at an Oval Office meeting.
  • And then there’s the MRI. In October, he went to Walter Reed for his “annual medical exam,” even though it was barely six months after his last “annual medical exam” at Walter Reed, and had a wide range of tests done, including an MRI. In recent days, Trump has gotten into a high-profile tiff with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who pressed him to release the results of that MRI. When asked, Trump couldn’t explain why he had the test.  Finally, yesterday the White House released information saying it was a chest MRI for his cardiovascular and abdominal systems and that, as the White House always says he is, the tests showed everything was “perfectly normal” and in “excellent health.” (Gavin Newsom mocked Trump about the results.)

But that’s not the reason worth having a conversation about Trump’s health today.

Today, we should be having a conversation about Trump’s increasingly clear diminished mental capacity. This is a man, after all, with the sole launch authority for the nation’s nuclear weapons who, on a daily basis, seems increasingly more disconnected from reality, beholden to conspiracy thinking, and — most simply — absent-minded. It is not a recipe for global stability — and deserves more serious conversation than its getting.

Please go read Graff’s specific arguments in support of his claims. It’s not long.

Yesterday Trump held a cabinet meeting on video. He could barely stay awake most of the time. Of course, he had been up most of the night posting insane garbage on Truth Social, but still…

Zolan Kanno-Youngs at The New York Times: Trump Appears to Fight Sleep During Cabinet Meeting.

President Trump appeared to be fighting sleep on Tuesday during a cabinet meeting at the White House, closing his eyes and at times seeming to nod off, after he criticized media coverage about him facing the realities of aging in office.

Over the course of two hours and 18 minutes, the president, who is 79, sometimes appeared to struggle to keep his eyes open as cabinet officials went around the room describing their work and heaping praise on him….

Mr. Trump does appear frequently before the news media, and he takes questions far more often than his predecessor, President Joseph R. Biden Jr., did. He is a regular, outsize presence in public life.

But Mr. Trump also appeared to have had a late night. He shared or posted dozens of times on social media on Monday night until nearly midnight.

Early in the meeting, Mr. Trump had complained that he was getting unfair scrutiny compared to Mr. Biden, who dropped out of the presidential race last year amid concerns in his own party about his age, mental acuity and ability to beat Mr. Trump.

“I’ll let you know when there’s something wrong. There will be someday,” Mr. Trump said. “That’s going to happen to all of us. But right now I think I’m sharper than I was 25 years ago. But who the hell knows?”

A bit more:

Mr. Trump then claimed he got “all A’s” on his physical.

But as Tuesday’s meeting went on, Mr. Trump seemed to grow tired.

About 50 minutes in, as Brooke L. Rollins, the agriculture secretary, spoke, Mr. Trump struggled to keep his eyes open before he leaned back and forth in his chair. More than an hour and a half into the meeting, while Linda McMahon, the education secretary, spoke, he closed his eyes for five seconds before leaning back and looking at the ceiling. Roughly 20 minutes later, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke, the president leaned forward and appeared to close his eyes again.

It was the second time in less than a month that Mr. Trump appeared to doze off in public. During an Oval Office event on Nov. 6, the president’s eyes grew heavy and closed for several seconds.

Trump recently announced that he had had an MRI scan at his latest physical exam, but claimed he had no idea what it was for. Experts have questioned that, and finally his doctor released some confusing details.

Gina Kolata at The New York Times: Memo From Trump’s Doctor Cites ‘Excellent’ Scan but Offers Little Clarity.

The White House released a letter from President Trump’s physician on Monday about the results of “advanced imaging tests.” The statement, by Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, said the tests on his cardiovascular system and abdominal region showed the president “remains in excellent overall health.”

Trump in yesterday’s cabinet meeting.

Some medical experts said it was unclear what tests doctors conducted, why they were done or what the results mean. And, they said, a person without symptoms would not have imaging tests as part of a routine medical exam under ordinary medical circumstances.

Mr. Trump, the oldest president ever sworn into his office, had M.R.I. scans in October as part of a semiannual physical exam. His annual physical was done in April.

On Sunday, during an appearance on “Meet the Press” on NBC News, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota called on the president to release the results after Mr. Trump had impugned Mr. Walz’s intelligence. Asked by a reporter on Sunday what part of his body was scanned, Mr. Trump said aboard Air Force One, “I have no idea — it was just an M.R.I.” He then said it was not a scan of his brain.

But Dr. Barbabella’s memo did not specify that Mr. Trump had a M.R.I. scan, which uses a magnetic field to produce images of soft tissues that do not show up on X-rays. Instead, the memo describes “advanced imaging” that it said was carried out “because men in his age group benefit from a thorough evaluation of cardiovascular and abdominal health.”

The imaging was part of Mr. Trump’s “comprehensive executive physical,” Dr. Barbabella explained, referring to a detailed medical exam often offered to executives. Such exams can include tests that are not normally done when people have no symptoms of disease.

The memo said Mr. Trump’s cardiovascular imaging is “perfectly normal” with no signs that his arteries are narrowed. His “cardiovascular system shows excellent health,” the statement said.

It added that, “his abdominal imaging is also perfectly normal,” and said, “this level of detailed assessment is standard for an executive physical at President Trump’s age and confirms that he remains in excellent overall health.”

They are obviously hiding something.

Dan Vergano at Scientific American: Trump’s MRI Is Not Standard ‘Preventive’ Care, Say Experts.

Medical experts are questioning the White House’s explanation for President Donald Trump’s MRI tests as “preventive.”

A Monday memo released by presidential physician Sean Barbabella described the results of “a thorough evaluation of cardiovascular and abdominal health” as normal. “This level of detailed assessment is standard for an executive physical at President Trump’s age,” Barbabella said.

Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, Trump’s doctor

But imaging experts who spoke to Scientific American expressed doubts as to Barbabella’s assertion that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) screening is typical preventive care. American Heart Association guidelines, for example, note that a cardiac MRI is usually requested because of existing heart conditions and often only after other tests.

“No, it is certainly not standard medical practice to perform screening MRIs of the heart and abdomen,” says radiologist and MRI expert Thomas Kwee of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Such imaging is typically only performed in the case of underlying disease, he says, or if there is suspicion of an underlying disease based on the patient’s medical history and physical examination. Barbabella’s memo said the imaging showed Trump was in “excellent health.”

Kwee’s comment echoed those of Medpage Today’s editor in chief, physician Jeremy Faust, who told CNN on Monday that “there’s really no such thing as routine prevention using an MRI.” Faust on Tuesday told Scientific American that the White House memo reference to “advanced imaging” left open questions as to exactly what tests Trump underwent. It could even possibly refer to a CT scan, for example, which is different than MRI. “If we knew exactly what imaging he received, it would give us a better idea of what conditions they are worried about,” Faust says.

More opinions:

“An assessment of a heart MRI and abdominal MRI is not ‘standard for an executive physical,’” says former White House physician Jeffrey Kuhlman, author of the book Transforming Presidential Healthcare. Though it’s not uncommon for physicians who have concierge-type practices to use total or partial body scans on their clients, “this is not evidence-based,” he adds….

Questions around Trump’s health have surfaced repeatedly in recent months. In July the White House reported that the president has chronic venous insufficiency, a blood vessel disease that affects circulation and can cause ankle swelling. And noticeable bruises on the back of Trump’s hands seen in February were attributed to “shaking hands all day” by Leavitt.

There is no solid evidence that executive MRI scans help people, Kwee says, either by diagnosing disease or extending their lifespan. “These scans can also lead to unexpected incidental findings and give false reassurance that there is no underlying disease.”

At least big media is beginning to talk about Trump’s obvious mental and physical health issues. We need them to start focusing on Trump’s age as much as they did Biden’s.

More important stories:

Judd Legum at Popular Information: Kushner’s Moscow mission wasn’t just corrupt. It was unconstitutional.

Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, has been traveling the world to participate in high-stakes foreign policy negotiations on behalf of the president. On Tuesday, Kushner traveled to Moscow and sat across the table from Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine. The entire United States delegation consisted only of Kushner and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff. Kushner and Witkoff were joined at the table by an interpreter.

Kushner’s participation in the Moscow meeting — and the similar role he played in the Gaza negotiations — likely violates the law.

Representing the Trump administration in high-level foreign policy negotiations makes Kushner, at a minimum, a Special Government Employee (SGE). Under the law, an SGE is someone “who is retained, designated, appointed, or employed to perform, with or without compensation, for not to exceed one hundred and thirty days during any period of three hundred and sixty-five consecutive days, temporary duties either on a full-time or intermittent basis.”

Trump has not named Kushner an SGE. But a seminal 1977 opinion by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) found “an identifiable act of appointment may not be absolutely essential for an individual to be regarded as an officer or employee in a particular case where the parties omitted it for the purpose of avoiding the application of the conflict-of-interest laws.” In that opinion, the OLC considered the status of an individual who had not been named to any role by the president but “assumed considerable responsibility for coordinating the Administration’s activities in [a] particular area.” The OLC concluded that since the individual was “quite clearly engaging in a governmental function” and is “working under the direction or supervision of the President,” he should be considered an SGE.

Here, Kushner is engaged in activities that can only be conducted by government officials. The Logan Act bars private citizens from engaging in negotiations with foreign governments without authorization. Kushner is acting in an authorized capacity, under Trump’s direction, and that creates a host of legal issues.

A the same time, Kushner is receiving payments from foreign governments.

Since leaving the White House in 2021, Kushner has raised at least $4.8 billion for Affinity Partners, his private equity firm. Nearly 99% of Affinity Partners’ funding comes from foreign sources. The largest investment, $2 billion, came from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF).

The Saudi government pays Kushner 1.25% of its investment, or $25 million annually. Other investors, including the governments of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), pay annual fees of up to 2%. As of September 2024, Affinity Partners had collected $157 million in fees, mainly from Middle Eastern governments.

Kushner is continuing to collect these fees as he serves in a top foreign policy role for the Trump administration. This is precisely the kind of behavior the Foreign Emoluments Clause was designed to prevent. Kushner was one of two Americans on Tuesday engaged in high-stakes negotiations with Putin. But as the private equity manager for billions of foreign capital, Kushner has a fiduciary duty to advance the financial interests of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other foreign governments.

The Washington Post: Ex-Honduras president, convicted of drug trafficking, freed on Trump pardon.

Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, convicted by a U.S. court last year on charges that he ran the Central American nation as a “narco-state” that helped send South American cocaine to the United States, has been released from federal prison after receiving a “full and unconditional” pardon from President Donald Trump.

Hernández, 57, was released Monday from U.S. Penitentiary Hazelton in West Virginia, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website and a BOP spokesperson.

Hernández, who was president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022, was serving 45 years in prison on importation and weapons charges. U.S. prosecutors said he built his political career on millions of dollars in bribes from traffickers in Honduras and Mexico, and as president helped to move at least 400 tons of cocaine to the United States while protecting traffickers from extradition and prosecution.

Juan Orlando Hernández

The Trump administration is waging what it says is a counternarcotics campaign off Venezuela. U.S. forces have destroyed at least 21 boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, killing more than 80 people, that officials say were carrying drugs to the U.S., and U.S. troops and warships are massing in the region. Trump has accused Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of sending violent criminals and drugs to the U.S.

But on Friday, Trump said that Hernández had been “treated very harshly and unfairly” and that he would grant him a “Full and Complete Pardon.”

“CONGRATULATIONS TO JUAN ORLANDO HERNANDEZ ON YOUR UPCOMING PARDON,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “MAKE HONDURAS GREAT AGAIN!”

Trump’s decision to pardon an official who, a federal court found, helped flood the United States with cocaine angered congressional Democrats.

“Hernandez’s conviction last year finally held him accountable for all the Honduran and American blood on his hands and sent an unequivocal message: No drug trafficker is above the law, not even former presidents,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “That is precisely why all Americans should be outraged by President Trump’s pardoning of former president Hernandez.”

I wonder how much Trump was paid for this pardon.

NBC News: Pentagon inspector general investigation into ‘Signalgate’ is complete.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday was given a final copy of the completed Defense Department Inspector General report that examined his sharing sensitive military information on a Signal group chat back in March, according to two people familiar with the investigation.

The much-anticipated report is expected to become public as early as this week, these people said.

Pete Hegseth

The report outlines the findings of a more than eight-month investigation into Hegseth’s use of Signal, an encrypted but unclassified messaging app, to share details of planned U.S. military strikes in Yemen before they had begun.

Hegseth has maintained that he shared no classified information on the group chat….

The two people familiar with the inspector general investigation would not say what its conclusions are. The report was requested by the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., on March 27.

The group chat, which included other top members of President Donald Trump’s national security team, became public after an editor for The Atlantic magazine was inadvertently added.

Let’s hope it’s not a whitewash.

Aram Roston at The Guardian: Family of victim in alleged Trump ‘drug boat’ killings files first formal complaint.

A family in Colombia filed a petition on Tuesday with the Washington DC-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, alleging that the Colombian citizen Alejandro Carranza Medina was illegally killed in a US airstrike on 15 September.

The petition marks the first formal complaint over the airstrikes by the Trump administration against suspected drug boats, attacks that the White House says are justified under a novel interpretation of law.

Alejandro Carranza Medina and his son. Photograph Courtesy of Carranza family

The IACHR, part of the Organization of American States, is designed to “promote and protect human rights in the Western Hemisphere”. The US is a member, and in March the Trump administration’s state department wrote: “The United States is pleased to be a strong supporter of the IACHR and is committed to continuing support for the Commission’s work and its independence. Preserving the IACHR’s autonomy is a pillar of our human rights policy in the region.”

The complaint was filed by Pittsburgh-based human rights lawyer Dan Kovalik. “On September 15, 2025, the United States military bombed the boat of Alejandro Andres Carranza Medina,” the filing says, “which Mr Carranza was sailing in the Caribbean off the coast of Colombia. Mr Carranza was killed in the process of this bombing.”

Kovalik identified Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, as the perpetrator, based on Hegseth’s own statements. “From numerous news reports, we know that Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of Defense, was responsible for ordering the bombing of boats like those of Alejandro Carranza Medina and the murder of all those on such boats. Secretary Hegseth has admitted that he gave such orders despite the fact that he did not know the identity of those being targeted for these bombings and extra-judicial killings,” the filing goes on.

The complaint adds: “US President Donald Trump has ratified the conduct of Secretary Hegseth described herein.”

NBC News: Trump administration pauses immigration applications from nationals of 19 countries.

Lazy Caturday Reads: Everything is Awful, As Usual

Posted: November 29, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

Shared Reflections, by Rebecca Aldernet

I can’t find any good news this morning–what else is new? The “president” is dangerously demented, his cabinet is full of kooks, his economy is going down the tubes, and he seems determined to start a war in Venezuela. Anyway, here are the stories that caught my attention today.

Venezuela Boat Strikes

I’m sure you’ve heard the reports about Pete Hegseth’s campaign of war crimes against alleged drug boats. Yesterday, The Washington Post published an exclusive report by Alex Horton and Ellen Nakashima (gift link): Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all.

The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraftfollowed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive,according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.

A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.

The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.

Hegseth’s order, which has not been previously reported, adds another dimension to the campaign against suspected drug traffickers. Some current and former U.S. officials and law-of-war experts have said that the Pentagon’s lethal campaign — which has killed more than 80 people to date — is unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to future prosecution.

The alleged traffickers pose no imminent threat of attack against the United States and are not, as the Trump administration has tried to argue, in an “armed conflict” with the U.S., these officials and experts say. Because there is no legitimate war between the two sides, killing any ofthe men in the boats “amounts to murder,” said Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces for seven years at the height of the U.S. counterterrorism campaign.

Even if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight “would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime,” said Huntley, now director of the national security law program at Georgetown Law.

Use the gift link to read the rest. We’re going to need prosecutions if we ever get rid of Trump and his goons.

Phillip M. Bailey at USA Today: Pete Hegseth lashes out at ‘kill them all’ report on boat strikes.

U.S Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is lashing out at a report that he ordered military officials to “kill them all” during one of the Trump administration’s strikes in the Caribbean aimed a boat allegedly carrying drug cargo.

Nataliya Bagatskaya, Echo of the black cats

“As usual, the fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland,” Hegseth, 45, said in a Nov. 28 post on X.

The defense secretary was responding to a Washington Post story citing two anonymous sources that claimed he ordered troops to leave no survivors after a missile struck the vessel, which was traveling off the Trinidad coast, as two individuals were clinging to the smoldering wreckage.

Since September, the Trump administration has attacked at least 21 boats traversing international waters, killing 83 people. Trump and other officials defend the boat strikes as an attempt to crackdown on illegal narcotics flooding into the U.S., but lawmakers from both parties have criticized the administration for providing no intelligence briefings or other evidence about what the vessels are carrying.

“At this point, I would call them extrajudicial killings,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said during an Oct. 26 appearance on Fox News Sunday. “This is akin to what China does, what Iran does with drug dealers − they summarily execute people without presenting evidence to the public. So it’s wrong.”

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who shared the story about Hegseth’s alleged order, raised similar concerns about the constitutionality of the strikes in an Nov. 28 post on X.

“If you want to know why Hegseth is panicking about reminders that there is accountably for giving or carrying out illegal orders, it’s likely because he knows he has given illegal orders to murder people,” Murphy said.

Victoria Bisset, Alex Horton, Ellen Nakashima, and Noah Robertson at The Washington Post: Senate committee vows ‘vigorous oversight’ in killing of boat strike survivors.

The head of the Republican-led Senate Armed Services Committee has pledged “vigorous oversight” after a Washington Post report that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken order to kill all crew members during the first U.S. strike against suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean earlier this year.

A live drone feed showed two survivors from the original crew of 11 clinging to the wreckage of their boat following the initial missile attack on Sept. 2, The Post reported on Friday afternoon. The Special Operations commander overseeing the operation then ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation, killing both survivors. Those people, along with five others in the original report, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

Late Friday, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island), the committee’s ranking Democrat, issued a statement saying that the committee “is aware of recent news reports — and the Department of Defense’s initial response — regarding alleged follow-on strikes on suspected narcotics vessels.”

The committee, they said, “has directed inquiries to the Department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”

If Trump is so concerned about drugs coming into the U.S. from Latin America, why did he just pardon a Honduran drug kingpin?

The New York Times: Trump Announces Pardon for Honduran Ex-President Convicted in Drug Case.

President Trump announced on Friday afternoon that he would grant “a Full and Complete Pardon” to a former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who, as the center of a sweeping drug case, was found guilty by an American jury last year of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.

By Louis Valtat

The news came as a shock not only to Hondurans, but also to the authorities in the United States who had built a major case and won a conviction against Mr. Hernández. They had accused him of taking bribes during his campaign from Joaquín Guzmán, the notorious former leader of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico known as “El Chapo,” and of running his Central American country like a narco state.

The judge in his case, P. Kevin Castel, had called Mr. Hernández “a two-faced politician hungry for power” who masqueraded as an antidrug crusader while partnering with traffickers. And prosecutors had asked the judge to make sure Mr. Hernández would die behind bars, citing his abuse of power, connections to violent traffickers and “the unfathomable destruction” caused by cocaine.

The prosecution stretched across Mr. Trump’s first term and concluded during Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s time as president. In the end, Mr. Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in prison in Federal District Court in Manhattan, capping what prosecutors had presented as a sprawling conspiracy.

Mike Vigil, a former chief of international operations at the same agency, also reacted with disbelief to the news of the pardon. Mr. Vigil said the move imperiled the reputation of the United States and its international investigations into drug trafficking.

“This action would be nothing short of catastrophic and would destroy the credibility of the U.S. in the international community,” Mr. Vigil said on Friday.

Mr. Trump’s vow to pardon such a high-profile convicted drug trafficker appeared to contradict the president’s campaign to unleash the might of the American military on small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that his administration says, without evidence, are involved in drug trafficking. That campaign has so far killed more than 80 people since it began in September.

There’s probably a bribe involved.

War in Venezuela?

Kelly Rissman at The Independent: Trump tells airlines to consider Venezuela’s airspace closed as US military buildup continues in region.

President Donald Trump told airlines to consider Venezuela’s airspace closed, days after he vowed to take action on land “very soon.”

Following dozens of strikes against alleged drug-carrying boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean that have killed more than 80 people since September, Trump suggested to military service members in a Thanksgiving Day phone call that the U.S. would soon take action “on land.”

On Saturday, he urged the clearing of the airspace near the South American country. “To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY,” the U.S. president wrote on Truth Social Saturday morning.

Over the weekend, the Federal Aviation Administration also warned airlines to “exercise caution” when flying over Venezuela “due to the worsening security situation and heightened military activity.”

Several airlines cancelled their flights as a result of the FAA’s warning.

By Salah Hefney

Can he do that? A bit more from the Independent story:

Last week, the White House was reportedly considering having U.S. military planes drop leaflets — containing details about the $50 million reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Nicolás Maduro — over Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, the Washington Postreported.

For months, the U.S. government has been building up a military presence in the region to curb what Trump administration officials call “narco-terrorists” and has also made it clear it wants to oust Maduro.

Maduro has been in power since 2013, following the death of Hugo Chavez. The U.S. is among more than 50 countries that have refused to recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s head of state, claiming he lost the 2024 presidential election. The State Department has offered rewards for information leading to the arrest or conviction of the Venezuelan president since 2020; the Trump administration raised the reward to $50 million this year.

The U.S. is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels, which Trump alleges are fueled by Maduro’s government. Last month, the State Department designated Cartel de los Soles as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization,” claiming it’s headed by Maduro and other high-ranking members of his “illegitimate” regime.

There’s more at the link.

Attacks on National Guard in DC

Jenny Gathright, Emily Davies, and Olivia George at The Washington Post: D.C. police to begin patrolling with National Guard after fatal attack.

National Guard troops patrolling in D.C. will be paired with local law enforcement personnel, at least temporarily, in the wake of the Wednesday attack that killed one National Guard member and critically injured another, according to an email obtained by The Washington Post and two D.C. police officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss planning that is still in progress.

“Officers will conduct high-visibility patrols with the National Guard and provide assistance as needed,” said the email, which was sent to D.C. police leadership Wednesday evening. The email said the situation was “fluid,” and adjustments to the staffing plan could be made in the coming days.

Fabrice Backès, Sandie

If enacted on a long-term basis, the change would significantly shift the way National Guard troops have worked with local and federal law enforcement in the District since their arrival in August. Trump administration officials have credited the troops for helping reduce crime in the city — in part, they argued, because the troops’ presence at Metro stations and on National Park Service lands frees up law enforcement to police other areas of the city. Diverting local police to accompany Guard members would do essentially the opposite by siphoning them from other tasks in D.C. neighborhoods.

The email said the new pairing would start Thursday and Friday.A D.C. police official said some officers had been temporarily detailed to accompany the troops, and a more long-term policy change was under discussion.

The official, who stressed that the discussions were still preliminary, said D.C. police, Metro Transit Police, U.S. Park Police and several other law enforcement agencies were having conversations with the National Guard task force in D.C. about pairing the troops with police officers while they are on city streets. Since their deployment to D.C., groups of National Guard troops have largely operated unaccompanied by police, the official said.

 A judge has already said that putting National Guard Troops in DC was illegal, but Trump filed an “emergency appeal.” Meanwhile, two members of the West Virginia National Guard have been shot. One has died and the other is still in critical condition.

NPR: Where things stand with the National Guard shooting in D.C.

Sarah Beckstrom, 20, of Summersville, W.Va., joined the service in 2023. Beckstrom’s father, Gary, called her his “baby girl” and said she had “passed to glory” in a Facebook post on Thursday.

West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey on Friday called for residents to hold a moment of silence for the two victims of the shooting, as both were deployed as part of that state’s National Guard.

Morrisey said in a statement Friday that Beckstrom had made the “ultimate sacrifice” in service to her state and the nation. He added that both Beckstrom and Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, had stepped forward and volunteered for the mission in D.C.

Morrisey also said that Wolfe remains in “very critical condition.”

“These two West Virginia heroes were serving our country and protecting our nation’s capital when they were maliciously attacked,” Morrisey said. “Their courage and commitment to duty represent the very best of our state.”

Trump’s Attacks on Woman Journalists

Corbin Bolies at The Wrap: Trump Calls CBS News Correspondent ‘Stupid Person’ in 4th Attack on Female Reporters in 2 Weeks.

President Donald Trump attacked another female reporter on Thursday after she asked him about the vetting of the suspect in a Washington, D.C., shooting that killed a National Guardsman, calling her a “stupid person.”

CBS News’ chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes questioned Trump about reports that Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the alleged gunman who entered the U.S. as part of a Biden-era program for Afghan refugees who fled the nation in 2021, was vetted before he allegedly shot at the National Guardsmen on Wednesday.

By Rebecca Aldernet

Reports indicated that Lakanwal was vetted either through his time working with the CIA in Afghanistan, during the removal process from Afghanistan or during his 2024 asylum application, which the Trump administration approved earlier this year.

Cordes, therefore, asked Trump why he blamed the Biden administration if U.S. officials confirmed vetting of the refugees took place. Trump didn’t enjoy the line of questioning.

“Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person?” Trump asked. “Because they came into on a plane along with 1000s of other people that shouldn’t be here, and you’re just asking questions because you’re a stupid person. And we — there’s a law passed that it’s almost impossible not to get to get them out. You can’t get them out once they come in. And they came in and they were unvetted. They were unchecked. There were many of them, and they came on big planes, and it was disgraceful.”

The attack was the latest in a series of swipes at female reporters. Trump on Wednesday described a New York Times reporter as “ugly, inside and out” over a reported story on his age. He also called a Bloomberg News reporter a “piggy” and an ABC News reporter a “terrible person” for her questioning of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Catherine Bouris at The Daily Beast: Trump’s Niece Exposes Why Her Uncle Keeps Attacking Female Reporters.

Donald Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, says one of the reasons the president seems to be increasingly lashing out at female reporters is because he is “rattled.

Mary, 60, discussed the rise in incidents on the Wednesday edition of her show, Mary Trump Live. She noted the 79-year-old president calling a reporter “piggy” while telling her to be quiet during a gaggle aboard Air Force One, and a Truth Social post in which he insulted a New York Times reporter’s looks.

“His misogynistic attacks against reporters in particular are increasing and that means a couple of things,” she explained. “It means that he’s increasingly comfortable lodging such attacks, as he’s been openly misogynistic, as he’s been openly racist and openly Islamophobic and openly anti-immigrant and openly antisemitic. There’s no hiding it anymore.”

”I think it’s also a sign that he’s a little rattled. He’s also never clearly heard of the Streisand effect,” Mary said, referring to the internet phenomenon where somebody inadvertently draws further attention to something while attempting to hide it from the public.

“When you call attention to the thing you want people to ignore, it’s probably a terrible idea.”

Trump’s Ballroom Obsession

Luke Broadwater at The New York Times (gift link): Inside Trump’s Push to Make the White House Ballroom as Big as Possible.

I posted about Trump’s conflicts with his architects on Wednesday. This is an extension of that story. After he met with architect James McCreary in August,

McCrery Architects got to work on the initial drawings for the project, sketching out a design with high ceilings and arched windows reminiscent of Versailles’s Hall of Mirrors. It would have the latest security features, including bulletproof glass. Gold furniture, known to please the president, was added to the renderings.

Black cat with cat lady, Dee Nickerson

It was flashy enough to impress a man of Mr. Trump’s tastes, while largely matching the style of the historic White House without overshadowing it.

That’s when things got tricky.

In offering up his initial design, Mr. McCrery could not have known that Mr. Trump’s vision for the project was growing. What started as a 500-seat ballroom connected to the East Wing grew to 650 seats. Next, he wanted a 999-seat ballroom, then room for 1,350. Even as Mr. Trump assured the public in July that the ballroom would not touch the existing structure, he already had approved plans to demolish the East Wing to make way for something that could hold several thousand people, according to three people familiar with the timeline.

The latest plan, which officials said was still preliminary, calls for a ballroom much larger than the West Wing and the Executive Mansion. Mr. Trump has said publicly that he would like a ballroom big enough to hold a crowd for a presidential inauguration.

The size of the project was not the only issue raising alarms. Mr. Trump also told people working on the ballroom that they did not need to follow permitting, zoning or code requirements because the structure is on White House grounds, according to three people familiar with his comments. (The firms involved have insisted on following industry standards.)

In recent weeks, Mr. McCrery has pulled back from day-to-day involvement in the project, two people familiar with the matter told The New York Times. They emphasized that Mr. McCrery was still involved as a consultant on the design and proud to be working for Mr. Trump.

Trump has destroyed our government; now he’s working on destroying the White House. Use the gift link to read the whole awful story.

Those are my recommended reads for today. What do you think?

Wednesday Reads: ICE in Massachusetts, Trump’s Aging, and His Decorating Fetish

Posted: November 26, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

I’m really struggling with watching/read the national news these days. I’m sure I’m not alone in that. I have been trying to follow local reports of federal immigration/deportation activities. Trump hasn’t sent troops to Massachusetts yet, but ICE has still been very busy here. A few recent stories:

Marcela Rodrigues and Scooty Nickerson of The Boston Globe write that the feds are acting quickly to get detainees out of New England (and away from friendly judges) to red states where it will be easier to keep them imprisoned: ‘Treated like an animal’: ICE is moving detained immigrants quickly to conservative states, raising due process concerns.

Last week, João Marciano do Carmo returned to his family in Milford, embraced his crying mother, and fell into the comfort of his living room couch. The 19-year-old had finally made the journey home from a jail in Mississippi, one of the detention facilities where he had been held since September on an immigration-related violation that, lawyers say, never warranted his detention in the first place.

He’s not alone, according to a Globe analysis of arrest and detention data and interviews with immigration attorneys and experts. Immigrants in New England targeted for deportation are being whisked away quicker and to farther locations than ever before. They are increasingly brought to remote areas of the country where they face more conservative judges who are less likely to grant them freedom, according to the interviews and the data analysis.

Kelly Lamphere, the mother-in-law of João Marciano do Carmo’s sister, embraced João as he arrived at his family’s home in Milford, Nov. 18. Erin Clark, Globe Staff

As agents carry out that agenda, advocates and legal analysts say, immigrants have lost essential due process rights. Detainees legally eligible for bond are moved quickly, and at times in violation of court orders. It can take days for them to be able to call their families. Often, not even their lawyers know where they are.

Legal experts warn the rapid rise in transfers to far-flung states is likely to accelerate as billions of dollars allocated by Congress in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last summer begin to flow to detention centers.

“To be super clear, this is the beginning,” said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an attorney and policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. “They are ramping up, but they have plans to go so much bigger.” [….]

ICE arrests in the Boston area more than tripled in the first seven months of this year compared to last, while the number of people sent to facilities outside New England spiked sixfold, according to the Globe analysis.

At the same time, the median period before someone was moved to an out-of-region facility was cut in half. Last year, it took around 20 days to move someone out of New England, while this year it took around 10 days.

What happened to João:

In Carmo’s case, the teenager, who moved to Milford from Brazil at age 11, was arrested on the way to work at a nearby farm with a friend from Milford High School. Immigration agents shattered his car window to apprehend them. The two teenagers, who have no criminal record, were put in a van with their hands and feet shackled.

For the first six days, they weren’t allowed to make a phone call. None of their family members or their lawyer could locate them. For days, their mothers in Milford wondered if they were alive.

In the seven weeks that followed, Carmo and Marcos Oliveira Martins were transferred from detention facility to detention facility, with stops in Massachusetts, New York, and Mississippi. They slept on concrete, the floor of a gymnasium, and in traditional jail cells.

“I was being really treated like an animal … I didn’t matter,” Carmo said at his home. His journey from New York to Mississippi lasted 16 hours between buses and a plane, and he was shackled the entire time.

Another heartbreaking story by Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio at The Boston Globe: A Babson College student wanted to surprise her family for Thanksgiving. She was deported instead.

Immigration authorities detained and swiftly deported a freshman at Babson College to Honduras last week while she was at Logan Airport on her way to surprise her family in Texas for Thanksgiving, according to attorneys and a family friend.

The young woman, Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, came to the United States from Honduras with her family when she was a young child and was at Logan Thursday to catch a flight to Texas, where her parents live, according to her attorney, Todd Pomerleau.

Lopez Belloza made it through security but was stopped as she was about to board the plane, Pomerleau said. “They wouldn’t tell her why she was being detained. She didn’t understand it at all,” Pomerleau said. She was then taken to the Burlington ICE field office, then flown to Texas, Pomerleau said.

abson college student, Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, at her high school graduation.Family Photo

After a frantic 48-hour search, her family received a call from her on Saturday from Honduras, a country she had not lived in since she was a child. The federal government had quickly deported her, the lawyers said, and Lopez Belloza had found her way to her grandparents’ house and called her father.

“It really didn’t feel like it was real life because nothing made sense,” said Ricky Soto, a close friend of the family who was desperately trying to contact attorneys to help the family. “I can only imagine how terrifying that was for her.”

Soto, 41, had bought Lopez Belloza plane tickets and helped organize the surprise for her family — he considers them family, too, and works with her father at a tailor shop in Texas.

The student’s parents and her two youngest siblings are also in Texas, and it would have been her first Thanksgiving break during college. “She was so excited, because she wasn’t expecting to come home,” Soto told the Globe.

Why did this happen?

Nayna Gupta, the policy director at the American Immigration Council, has also been assisting the family with the case, quickly scrambling to find local lawyers and contact representatives on Thursday evening after hearing of the case. Lopez Belloza apparently had a removal order from around 2017 that neither she nor her family was aware of, Gupta said.

“They didn’t know to show up somewhere, and she certainly had no idea of any of this,” Gupta said.

Before Trump, people  in this category weren’t targeted; now that has changed. Now Lopez Belloza may not be able to continue her education.

Soto, the family friend, remembers Lopez Belloza‘s father learning of his daughter’s college acceptance last year, bursting into their shop with such enthusiasm to share the news.

“Based on what I know about her father and his family, and what they went through, and how he’s been able to grow and persevere, and have a family — and then his oldest daughter is achieving this,” Soto said, “everybody was just really proud.”

Pomerleau, Lopez Belloza‘s attorney based in Massachusetts, said that she is a business student who received a scholarship to attend Babson. Now, Lopez Belloza isn’t sure if she’ll be able to finish her finals, Pomerleau said. He was able to speak with Lopez Belloza for the first time on Monday.

“She was really sad,” Pomerleau said. “I told her, ‘We’re going to fight like hell until we bring you back.’”

There must be terrible stories like this all over the country. It makes me sick at heart.

One more Massachusetts immigration story by Tara Prindiville and Dennis Romero at NBC News: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s relative detained by ICE.

Officials have detained the mother of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s nephew amid the Trump administration’s ramped-up immigration enforcement efforts, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to NBC News.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took the woman into custody in Revere, Massachusetts, this month, the source said.

Bruna Ferreira has an 11-year-old son with Michael Leavitt, who is the press secretary’s brother.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said Bruna Caroline Ferreira is a “criminal illegal alien from Brazil” who overstayed her tourist visa, which expired in June 1999.

The woman has an arrest on suspicion of battery, the spokesperson said. It’s not clear how the case was resolved.

Ferreira, who the source familiar with the situation said has never lived with Leavitt’s nephew, is at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center amid proceedings to have her removed, the DHS spokesperson said….

The source said Leavitt’s nephew has lived full time in New Hampshire with his father since he was born, has never resided with his mother and has not spoken with her in many years….

Ferreira’s family said in a GoFundMe campaign that she was brought to the United States as a child in 1998 and that she has done “everything in her power to build a stable, honest life here.”

It says she “maintained her legal status” in the United States by receiving protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which seeks to allow immigrants brought to the United States as children, albeit illegally, to enjoy protection from removal.

The Associated Press reported Tuesday that DACA recipients have been among those detained in immigration sweeps.

The New York Times has finally noticed that Trump is really old.

Katie Rogers and Dylan Freedman at The New York Times (gift link): Shorter Days, Signs of Fatigue: Trump Faces Realities of Aging in Office.

With headline-grabbing posts on social media, combative interactions with reporters and speeches full of partisan red meat, Mr. Trump can project round-the-clock energy, virility and physical stamina. Now at the end of his eighth decade, Mr. Trump and the people around him still talk about him as if he is the Energizer Bunny of presidential politics.

The reality is more complicated: Mr. Trump, 79, is the oldest person to be elected to the presidency, and he is aging. To pre-empt any criticism about his age, he often compares himself to President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who at 82 was the oldest person to hold the office, and whose aides took measures to shield his growing frailty from the public, including by tightly managing his appearances….

Mr. Trump remains almost omnipresent in American life. He appears before the news media and takes questions far more often than Mr. Biden did. Foreign leaders, chief executives, donors and others have regular access to Mr. Trump and see him in action.

Still, nearly a year into his second term, Americans see Mr. Trump less than they used to, according to a New York Times analysis of his schedule. Mr. Trump has fewer public events on his schedule and is traveling domestically much less than he did by this point during his first year in office, in 2017, although he is taking more foreign trips.

He also keeps a shorter public schedule than he used to. Most of his public appearances fall between noon and 5 p.m., on average.

And when he is in public, occasionally, his battery shows signs of wear. During an Oval Office event that began around noon on Nov. 6, Mr. Trump sat behind his desk for about 20 minutes as executives standing around him talked about weight-loss drugs.

At one point, Mr. Trump’s eyelids drooped until his eyes were almost closed, and he appeared to doze on and off for several seconds. At another point, he opened his eyes and looked toward a line of journalists watching him. He stood up only after a guest who was standing near him fainted and collapsed.

A bit more:

Mr. Trump has prompted additional questions about his health by sharing news about medical procedures he has had, but not details about them. While in Asia, Mr. Trump revealed that he had undergone magnetic resonance imaging at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in early October.

“I gave you the full results,” Mr. Trump told reporters, mischaracterizing the summary that was released by his physician, which did not say that Mr. Trump had an M.R.I. scan and contained few other details….

Trump dozing in an Oval Office meeting

Mr. Trump also applies makeup to a bruise on the back of his right hand, adding speculation about a medical condition that his physician and aides say is caused by taking aspirin and shaking so many hands. In September, the bruising on his hand, coupled with swollen ankles, caused observers on the internet to speculate wildly about his health….

According to a Times analysis of the official presidential schedules in a database maintained by Roll Call, Mr. Trump’s first official event starts later in the day. In 2017, the first year of his first term, Mr. Trump’s scheduled events started at 10:31 a.m. on average. By contrast, Mr. Trump in his second term has started scheduled events in the afternoon on average, at 12:08 p.m. His events end on average at around the same time as they did during the first year of his first term, shortly after 5 p.m.

The number of Mr. Trump’s total official appearances has decreased by 39 percent. In 2017, Mr. Trump held 1,688 official events between Jan. 20 and Nov. 25 of that year. For that same time period this year, Mr. Trump has appeared in 1,029 official events.

Mr. Trump still regularly comes down to the Oval Office after 11 a.m., according to a person familiar with his schedule. This routine is a holdover from his first term: After he complained about being overscheduled in the mornings, Mr. Trump kept so-called executive time hours in the White House residence before he headed downstairs for work.

It’s nothing we don’t know about, but at least the Times admits Trump is declining with age.

Predictably, Trump was unhappy with the story. Tom Boggiani at Raw Story: Trump flips out at New York Times ‘creeps’ in furious rant over ‘hit piece’ about his naps.

The New York Times appears to have touched a nerve with Donald Trump after reporting that observers are noting his lack of energy and increasing fatigue as his age catches up with him during his second year.

In the report, the Times noted, “… when he is in public, occasionally, his battery shows signs of wear. During an Oval Office event that began around noon on Nov. 6, Mr. Trump sat behind his desk for about 20 minutes as executives standing around him talked about weight-loss drugs,” before reporting that the 79-year-old president appeared to all observers to have dozed off as those around him spoke.

Clearly stung, Trump took to Truth Social on Wednesday morning to lash out, while also boasting about his last election win for some curious reason.

“The Creeps at the Failing New York Times are at it again. I won the 2024 Presidential Election in a Landslide, winning all Seven Swing States, the Popular Vote, and the Electoral College by a lot. I one our Nation’s Districts by 2750 to 550, a complete wipeout. I settled 8 Wars, have 48 New Stock Market Highs, our Economy is Great, and our Country is RESPECTED AGAIN all over the World, respected like never before. The last Administration had the Highest Inflation in history – I have already brought that down to normal, and prices, including groceries, are coming down,” he wrote.

He continued, “To do this requires a lot of Work and Energy, and I have never worked so hard in my life. Yet despite all of this the Radical Left Lunatics in the soon to fold New York Times did a hit piece on me that I am perhaps losing my Energy, despite facts that show the exact opposite.”

“They know this is wrong, as is almost every thing that they write about me, including election results, ALL PURPOSELY NEGATIVE. This cheap ‘RAG’ is truly an ‘ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.’ The writer of the story, Katie Rogers, who is assigned to write only bad things about me, is a third rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out,” he complained, once again insulting a female reporter’s physical appearance.

“Despite all of this, I have my highest Poll Numbers, ever, and with record setting investment being made in America, they should only go up,” he insisted before claiming, “There will be a day when I run low on Energy, it happens to everyone, but with a PERFECT PHYSICAL EXAM AND A COMPREHENSIVE COGNITIVE TEST (‘That was aced’) JUST RECENTLY TAKEN, it certainly is not now! GOD BLESS AMERICA & MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

He’s not just old; he’s certifiably insane.

Based on what is reported in the news, Trump spends much of his time on his redecorating obsessions.

Jonathan Edwards and Dan Diamond at The Washington Post (gift link): Trump wants a bigger White House ballroom. His architect disagrees.

President Donald Trump has argued with the architect he handpicked to design a White House ballroom over the size of the project, reflecting a conflict between architectural norms and Trump’s grandiose aesthetic, according to four people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal conversations.

Trump with ballroom architect James McCrery

Trump’s desire to go big with the project has put him at odds with architect James McCrery II, the people said, who has counseled restraint over concerns the planned 90,000-square-foot addition could dwarf the 55,000-square-foot mansion in violation of a general architectural rule: don’t build an addition that overshadows the main building.

A White House official acknowledged the two have disagreed but would not say why or elaborate on the tensions, characterizing Trump and McCrery’s conversations about the ballroom as “constructive dialogue.” [….]

Trump’s intense focus on the project and insistence on realizing his vision over the objections of his own hire, historic preservationists and others concerned by a lack of public input in the project reflect his singular belief in himself as a tastemaker and obsessive attention to details. In the first 10 months of his second term, Trump has waged a campaign to remake the White House in his gilded aesthetic and done so unilaterally — using a who’s-going-to-stop-me ethos he honed for decades as a developer.

Multiple administration officials have acknowledged that Trump has at times veered into micromanagement of the ballroom project, holding frequent meetings about its design and materials. A model of the ballroom has also become a regular fixture in the Oval Office.

The renovation represents one of the largest changes to the White House in its 233-year history, and has yet to undergo any formal public review. The administration has not publicly provided key details about the building, such as its planned height. The 90,000-square-foot structure also is expected to host a suite of offices previously located in the East Wing. The White House has also declined to specify its plans for an emergency bunker that was located below the East Wing, citing matters of national security.

You can read the rest using the gift link.

Trump also plans to redesign some golf courses. Sarah Fortinsky at The Hill: Trump says Jack Nicklaus will lead golf course overhaul at Joint Base Andrews.

President Trump said Jack Nicklaus, the retired professional golfer, will oversee an overhaul of the golf courses at Joint Base Andrews.

Trump told reporters he was tapping Nicklaus as the architect of the project on Saturday before boarding Marine One to head to Andrews, where he later took an aerial tour of the landscape.

85 year old Jack Nichlaus

“We’re doing some fix-up of the base, which it needs. We’re going to try and reinstitute the golf courses. I’m meeting with the greatest Jack Nicklaus,” Trump said.

“He’s involved in trying to bring their recreational facility back,” he added, calling it a “great place that has been destroyed over the years through lack of maintenance, so we’ll fix that up, and Jack will be the architect and he’ll design it.”

Trump said the project would address “two existing courses that are in very bad shape” and said, “We can, for very little money, fix it up.”

Trump has time for all this because he doesn’t really care about serious issues and leaves those to his staff, his pal Putin, and apparently Jared Kushner. I haven’t really gotten into politics and foreign policy in this post, but here are some headlines if you’re interested.

Jacqueline Cole, Mariana Lastovyria, and Tim Mak at The Counteroffensive: NEWSFLASH: Witkoff was secretly giving Russians advice.

Shaun Walker at The Guardian: Who leaked Witkoff’s call advising Kremlin on how to get Trump on side?

Betsy Klein at CNN: Trump brushes off concerns about Witkoff’s interactions with Russians as leaked transcript roils Washington.

Apoorva Mandavilli at The New York Times: Doctor Critical of Vaccines Quietly Appointed as C.D.C.’s Second in Command.

David Cole at The New York Times: Mark Kelly Is Being Investigated for Telling the Truth.

Politico: Trump opens the door to Obamacare subsidy extension.

The Independent: Trump denies he pushed two-year healthcare subsidies extension, calls Obamacare a ‘disaster.’

The Daily Beast: Why Trump Aide Is Thinking 25th Amendment: Wolff.

That’s it for me today. What’s on your mind?

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →