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?