This morning, Steven Beschloss posted the following discussion question for his readers at his Substack “America America”: Is Love More Powerful Than Hate?
I had in mind to write about villainy. It’s a fact of our public life that the Trump regime is thick with this dark force and overloaded with people who revel in it. The villains come easily to mind: Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Pete Hegseth, Russel Vought, Greg Bovino (to name a few) and of course their ringleader, Donald Trump. They have motivated countless others to join their hateful cause to reject the Constitution and demolish democracy in America.
But on this day—Valentine’s Day—I want to turn this over and look at the flip side. Because behind this discussion of villains and villainy is my belief that their dark force can be defeated with the force of light and love. I don’t mean the biblical advice to “love your enemies,” although that may be a mindset that others more merciful than I can conjure.
I’m thinking more about the guidance found in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. on the topic of love. Let me share four shining examples:
“Love is the greatest force in the universe. It is the heartbeat of the moral cosmos.”
“Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.”
“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.”
“I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind’s problems.”
There are days that these insights—these deeply held convictions—may seem inadequate to confront the horrors we witness committed by men and women who have lost their moral compass, assuming that they once possessed one. But I’d like to suggest that the more powerful our revulsion toward the regime’s acts of villainy, the more we are influenced by the inverse.
I returned to yesterday’s essay, “Pam Bondi’s Utter Contempt for Justice,” to test this notion. If you read it and thought that I am horrified by her villainous behavior this week, you would be right. But let’s look at the basis for my horror in three sentences from the first several paragraphs: “It’s hard to imagine someone more overtly hostile to justice and more utterly incapable of basic human compassion…This person is responsible for serving the people…But when asked for the most basic show of humanity, she couldn’t bring herself to do it.” Behind the obvious criticism of her hateful action is love: For justice, for basic human compassion, for serving the people, for humanity.
My point is that in our articulation of the horrors, we can find the light that can inspire us to stay in the fight and overcome this dark chapter. “Love is the greatest force in the universe. It is the heartbeat of the moral cosmos,” King wrote. In other words, love is more powerful than hate and, as King also insisted, “the only answer to mankind’s problems.”
Bad Bunny sent a similar message with his Super Bowl performance. Is it true? Can love conquer hate? Food for thought on Valentine’s Day.
Now for the news, which is again filled with hate and fear.
Trump appears to be planning some sort of attack on Iran.
The U.S. military is preparing for the possibility of sustained, weeks-long operations against Iran if President Donald Trump orders an attack, two U.S. officials told Reuters, in what could become a far more serious conflict than previously seen between the countries.
The disclosure by the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the planning, raises the stakes for the diplomacy underway between the United States and Iran.
U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will hold negotiations with Iran on Tuesday in Geneva, with representatives from Oman acting as mediators. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio cautioned on Saturday that while Trump’s preference was to reach a deal with Tehran, “that’s very hard to do.”
Meanwhile, Trump has amassed military forces in the region, raising fears of new military action. U.S. officials said on Friday the Pentagon was sending an additional aircraft carrier to the Middle East, adding thousands more troops along with fighter aircraft, guided-missile destroyers and other firepower capable of waging attacks and defending against them.
Trump, speaking to U.S. troops on Friday at a base in North Carolina, openly floated the possibility of regime change in Iran, saying it “seems like that would be the best thing that could happen.” He declined to share who he wanted to take over Iran, but said “there are people.”
“For 47 years, they’ve been talking and talking and talking,” Trump said.
Trump has long voiced skepticism about sending ground troops into Iran, saying last year “the last thing you want to do is ground forces,” and the kinds of U.S. firepower arrayed in the Middle East so far suggest options for strikes primarily by air and naval forces.
President Trump said on Friday that regime change in Iran “would be the best thing that could happen,” as he continued to threaten military action against the country.
“For 47 years, they’ve been talking and talking and talking,” he told reporters after visiting troops at Fort Bragg. “In the meantime, we’ve lost a lot of lives while they talk.”
In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has called for new leadership in Iran, and The New York Times reported in January that he was mulling whether regime change would be a viable military option.
But his latest comments are, perhaps, Mr. Trump’s most overt endorsement of regime change, even as U.S. officials concede that ousting Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be much more complex than the operation that captured Nicolás Maduro, then the leader of Venezuela.
Still, officials have said that Mr. Trump had not made a final decision and was considering a range of military options.
The Trump administration has been steadily building up its military capabilities in the Middle East as Mr. Trump considers whether to strike the country again. Mr. Trump threatened last month to attack Iran if its government did not agree to a deal to curb its nuclear program….
But senior U.S. officials remain skeptical that the Iranians will agree to a deal that satisfies Mr. Trump, who has shown a growing impatience with the negotiations. This month, Omani officials mediated talks between Iran and a U.S. delegation that included Steve Witkoff,
A bit more on possible attack plans:
Mr. Trump has been weighing a range of military actions, including targeting Iran’s nuclear program and its ability to launch ballistic missiles. He is also considering sending American commandos to go after Iranian military targets, among other moves, the officials said.
To prepare, the Pentagon has been building up an “armada,” as Mr. Trump calls it, in the region. It includes the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group, eight guided missile destroyers that can shoot down Iranian ballistic missiles, land-based ballistic missile defense systems and submarines that can launch Tomahawk cruise missiles at targets in Iran.
And on Thursday, the crew of a second aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford, was told it would leave the Caribbean, where the ship joined the U.S. operation last month to seize Mr. Maduro, and deploy to the Middle East as part of Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign.
The U.S. Southern Command said it struck a vessel allegedly transporting drugs in the Caribbean on Friday, killing three people.
“Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations,” Southern Command said in a post on X, adding that “intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations.”
“Three narco-terrorists were killed during this action. No U.S. military forces were harmed,” the post said.
The U.S. has not provided evidence supporting its allegations about the boat, passengers, cargo or the number of people killed.
This latest strike comes after the U.S. on Monday struck a vessel also alleged to be transporting drugs in the eastern Pacific, killing two people and leaving one survivor.
A few days ago, there was a disturbing incident in Texas in which DHS used a powerful laser weapon with out notifying other parts of the government. It caused the FAA to close the air space over El Paso, Texas for a time. I have been curious about how this happened.
The abrupt closure of El Paso’s airspace late Tuesday was precipitated when Customs and Border Protection officials deployed an anti-drone laser on loan from the Department of Defense without giving aviation officials enough time to assess the risks to commercial aircraft, according to multiple people briefed on the situation.
The episode led the Federal Aviation Administration to abruptly declare that the nearby airspace would be shut down for 10 days, an extraordinary pause that was quickly lifted Wednesday morning at the direction of the White House.
Top administration officials quickly claimed that the closure was in response to a sudden incursion of drones from Mexican drug cartels that required a military response, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy declaring in a social media post that “the threat has been neutralized.”
But that assertion was undercut by multiple people familiar with the situation, who said that the F.A.A.’s extreme move came after immigration officials earlier this week used an anti-drone laser shared by the Pentagon without coordination with the F.A.A. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
C.B.P. officials thought they were firing on a cartel drone, the people said, but it turned out to be a party balloon. Defense Department officials were present during the incident, one person said….
The military has been developing high-energy laser technology to intercept and destroy drones, which the Trump administration has said are being used by Mexican cartels to track Border Patrol agents and smuggle drugs into the United States.
The airspace closure provoked a significant backlash from local officials and sharp questions by lawmakers on Capitol Hill, including some Republicans, who expressed skepticism about the administration’s version of the events.
The sudden closure of El Paso’s airspace Wednesday came sometime after U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials used an anti-drone laser that was provided by the military to shoot down objects that were later identified as party balloons, four people familiar with the matter said.
The testing of U.S. military-owned laser technology was taking place in the proximity of the airport. The FAA responded by issuing a “temporary flight restriction notice,” which was to shut down the airspace for 10 days. It prevented flights, including helicopters used for medical transport, below 18,000 feet. The airport is a major hub for the region, with more than 50 flights scheduled every day.
The airspace was reopened several hours later Wednesday morning. The decision prompted confusion and finger-pointing inside the Trump administration over who was to blame….
One of the people familiar with the testing said the Defense Department has a working relationship with Homeland Security, where CBP is headquartered, that allows its personnel to use certain military equipment for its objectives, testing, evaluation and use along the southern border.
Recently, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth authorized the use of the weapon for CBP, the people said. Spokespeople for CBP referred questions to the White House, which did not elaborate beyond initial statements.
It figures Hegseth would be involved in this mess.
AFTER PROLONGED CONFUSION, we may have some clarity on what caused the emergency restriction on the airspace around El Paso International Airport: Someone used a sophisticated anti-air laser against what they thought was a drone launched from Mexico, but turned out to be a party balloon. Understandably, the first suspects were the Army units at Fort Bliss, which abuts El Paso and the airport. But it wasn’t the Army that fired the weapon.
According to the New York Times, Customs and Border Protection personnel fired an experimental anti-drone laser on loan from the Department of Defense at what they thought was a cartel drone—without sufficient coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration. That prompted the FAA to shut down the airspace around the airport up to 18,000 feet in an extraordinary emergency move.
But focusing on the harmlessness of the target obscures the deeper issue: Why was this weapon employed without the discipline that governs every legitimate use of force in the military?
Fort Bliss sits on the edge of El Paso. While it’s a large post, and it has a very isolated desert training area, it borders a large city with hospitals, businesses, highways, civilian neighborhoods, and a relatively large international airport.
The post is home to the 1st Armored Division, an organization I once commanded. Like every major installation in the Army, Fort Bliss operates under detailed standing operating procedures governing weapons employment—whether on a live-fire range, during air-defense exercises, or in any activity that could affect surrounding airspace or population centers.
Those procedures are not bureaucratic red tape. They are necessary safety barriers. They exist precisely because military commanders understand various immutable facts: weapons are dangerous, coordination for any training event is critical, citizens live nearby, and mistakes do not stay contained.
It’s therefore unsurprising—though deeply concerning—that reports indicate the Fort Bliss commander and the command and staff of Northern Command were as alarmed as the FAA by the balloon shoot-down. That’s because they know any uncoordinated weapons use is not merely unsafe; it is unacceptable.
Please go read the rest at The Bulwark, if you’re interested. Personally, I find this incident deeply disturbing. There are simply too many incompetent–even stupid–people running our government. Eventually there is going to be a serious disaster.
More disturbing Trump Administration/DHS news–this time involving the Social Security Administration:
“If ICE comes in and asks if someone has an upcoming appointment, we will let them know the date and time,” an employee with direct knowledge of the directive says. They spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
While the majority of appointments with SSA take place over the phone, some appointments still happen in person. This applies to people who are deaf or hard of hearing and need a sign language interpreter, or if someone needs to change their direct deposit information. Noncitizens are also required to appear in person to review continued eligibility of benefits.
Social Security numbers are issued to US citizens but also to foreign students and people legally allowed to live and work in the country. In some cases, when a child or dependent is a citizen and the family member responsible for them is not, that person might need to accompany the child or dependent to an office visit.
The order to share information, which was recently communicated verbally to workers at certain SSA offices, marks a new era of collaboration between SSA and the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency….
The SSA has been sharing data with ICE for much of President Donald Trump’s second term. In April, WIRED reported that the Trump administration had been pooling sensitive data from across the government, including from the the SSA, DHS, and the Internal Revenue Service. By November, WIRED learned that the SSA had made the arrangements official and had updated a public notice that said the agency was sharing “citizenship and immigration information” with DHS. “It was shockingly clear that there was interest in getting access to immigration data by [the] Trump administration,” a former SSA official tells WIRED. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity due to concerns of retaliation.
The Social Security Administration has instructed employees newly assigned to answering phones to tell callers expressing suicidal thoughts that suicide is “one option,” raising concerns from employees and experts in the field who called the approach unorthodox.
SSA recently began shifting new swaths of its workforce to phone answering duty, including those who normally receive and process retirement and disability claims, manage the agency’s technology and work in the agency’s finances unit. Those employees received brief, three-hour training before they began answering calls.
As part of that training, they were warned some callers may express suicidal ideation and presented with examples using a theoretical employee named Fiona.
“It’s important for Fiona to keep the caller engaged and to remind her that suicide is only one option,” the animated trainer told employees in the video, a copy of which was obtained by Government Executive, “and that there is no urgency to make any decisions.”
Employees at the training, which occurred on Jan. 26 for benefits authorizers and post-entitlement technical experts, were taken aback by the comment and asked their supervisors for clarity. One employee at the training said there was “disbelief that it was just said” among those in the room.
Caitlin Thompson, a clinical psychologist who spent eight years at the Veterans Affairs Department as a clinical care coordinator on the Veterans Crisis Line and later as the department’s national director of suicide prevention, said SSA’s approach did not follow commonly accepted best practices.
“It’s not a normal thing to say,” Thompson said. “No. That’s not the thing you say to somebody who might be suicidal.”
Instead, SSA would be better suited telling employees to ask callers if they feel safe in the immediate term and if they say no, to tell the caller that they will work with their supervisor to get them in touch with a crisis line.
Read more at the link.
I’ll end with this update on Trump’s ballroom obsession.
New renderings shared Friday offer the clearest look yet at President Donald Trump’s proposed White House ballroom addition — a project advancing even as it is challenged in court and questioned on Capitol Hill.
Shalom Baranes Associates, the firm handling the project, shared the renderings with the National Capital Planning Commission, a committee charged by Congress with overseeing major federal construction projects in the region. The renderings include various angles of the ballroom building, an approximately 90,000-square-foot addition that would also include offices for White House staff. The White House has dubbed the project its “East Wing Modernization.”
The images reveal at least one significant change from earlier designs: the removal of a large triangular pediment above the ballroom’s southern portico. Rodney Cook Jr. — a Trump appointee who chairs the Commission of Fine Arts, another federal panel reviewing the project — had warned in January that the pediment was “immense” and pressed the architects about whether it could be reduced.
Despite the revisions, the proposed addition would remain the same height as the White House at its highest point — a priority for Trump and a major concern for outside architects and historical preservationists. Critics have warned the project could overshadow the iconic main mansion and alter long-protected sightliness around the complex. The new renderings indicate the buildingcould block views of the White House residence from certain viewpoints, such as locations on 15th Street NW, according to the designs shared Friday.
Bruce Redman Becker, an architect who was appointed to the Commission of Fine Arts by former president Joe Biden and removed by Trump last year, said the renderings show “a poorly proportioned pseudo-neoclassical structure that is completely out of scale with the White House.” He also said that the images shown in the renderings did not comply with decades-old guidelines developed by the National Park Service for construction projects at the White House and its neighboring park, which call for new additions to be compatible with the historic structure.
“The design team clearly ignored these guidelines, and should be asked to revise and resubmit plans that follow the guidelines,” Becker said.
You can use the gift link to read more and see the renderings.
That’s it for me today. What are your thoughts on all this? What else is on your mind?
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Before I get going with today’s news, I want to share this disturbing, but absolutely essential piece by Robert Reich: You could be next. This is personal.
If agents of the federal government can murder a 37-year-old woman in broad daylight who, as videotapes show, was merely trying to get out of their way, they can murder you.
Even if Trump and his vice president and his secretary of homeland security all claim, contrary to the videotapes, that Renee Nicole Good was trying to kill an agent who acted in self-defense, they could make up the same about you.
Even if Trump describes her as a “professional agitator” and his goons call her a “domestic terrorist,” they could say the same about you regardless of your political views or activism. If you have left-wing political views and are an activist, you’re in greater danger.
Renee Good
How can we believe what the FBI turns up in its investigation, when the FBI is working for Trump and is headed by one of his goons, and is investigating possible connections between Renee Good and groups that have been protesting Trump’s immigration enforcement?
What credence can we give federal officials who are blocking local and state investigators from reviewing evidence they’re collecting?
You could be murdered because Trump’s attorney general has defined “domestic terrorism” to include impeding law enforcement officers. What if you’re merely standing in the way — in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or maybe you’re engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience?
In October, Marimar Martinez, a U.S. citizen in Chicago, was in her car trying to warn people about ICE when she collided with a Border Patrol vehicle. Federal officials say she “rammed” the car. Her lawyers say she was sideswiped by it.
The agent then got out of his car and shot her five times. She survived. The Justice Department then charged her with assaulting a federal officer.
You could be next. All of us need to realize this. The people who are being assaulted and murdered are abiding the law….
Trump could just as well arrest and expel permanent residents who voice support for, say, transgender people or DEI or “woke” or anything else the regime finds “anti-American” and offensive.
What’s to stop the Trump regime from arresting you for, say, advocating the replacement of Republicans in Congress in 2026 and electing a Democrat to the presidency in 2028? [….]
What’s at stake isn’t just American democracy. It’s also your safety and security and that of your friends and loved ones. This is personal — to every one of us.
A dictatorship knows no bounds.
These are the facts of life in the U.S. now. We are all at risk. Trump can order his goons to any city or state and they will run wild because Trump and Vance have told them they have “absolute immunity.” You can be dragged from your car and beaten–even killed and Trump will celebrate you for it.
Admittedly, those of us who are white are less at risk, but the murder of Renee Good shows that we are not immune from the ICE reign of terror. Trump now has his private army–comparable to Hitler’s SS. They report to him, not to Congress or the American people.
The video shows a young employee in a reflective vest being hauled away by federal agents from the entrance of a Target store in a Minneapolis suburb.
“I’m a U.S. citizen!” the worker shouted as the armed agents shoved him into an S.U.V. after he had directed expletives at one. “U.S. citizen! U.S. citizen!”
In and around Minneapolis in recent days — in quiet residential neighborhoods and busy shopping districts, at gas station and big box store parking lots — similar chaotic scenes are unfolding, an escalation of tensions between residents and federal agents as the Trump administration intensifies its immigration crackdown in Minnesota after the killing of Renee Good by an immigration officer last week.
“It feels like our community is under siege by our own federal government,” said State Representative Michael Howard, a Democrat whose district includes Richfield, where the Target employee and another colleague were seized on Thursday.
Mr. Howard said both workers were U.S. citizens and were later released. The Department of Homeland Security said the Target worker seen in the video was arrested in connection with “assaulting, resisting or impeding federal officers.” It was unclear on Tuesday if the employee had been charged.
Federal officers are descending on streets in what they say is an effort to find undocumented immigrants with criminal and dangerous backgrounds. They are displaying a show of force they argue is necessary in cities and states where local governments and law enforcement agencies have refused to help them. But many residents, business owners and immigrant workers have denounced the tactics, saying the agents are indiscriminately sweeping up hard-working friends and neighbors based on racial and ethnic profiling, and are increasingly organizing to push back.
The skirmishes between residents and the heavily armed federal agents have been especially nerve-racking for residents of Minneapolis, where the memories of the 2020 murder of George Floyd — and the protests and rioting that followed — are still raw. This time, residents and elected officials say, the fear is not abuses by law enforcement but an encroaching federal government.
Video of the Target arrests:
ICE kidnapping two U.S. citizens from a Target in Richfield, Minnesota. I recognize their head dickhead, Greg Bovino, showed up for the festivities. I’m grateful that there were people there that spoke up and got their names before they could be disappeared. #FuckICE #FuckGregBovino #Minnesota
Mr. Howard said both workers were U.S. citizens and were later released. The Department of Homeland Security said the Target worker seen in the video was arrested in connection with “assaulting, resisting or impeding federal officers.” It was unclear on Tuesday if the employee had been charged.
Federal officers are descending on streets in what they say is an effort to find undocumented immigrants with criminal and dangerous backgrounds. They are displaying a show of force they argue is necessary in cities and states where local governments and law enforcement agencies have refused to help them. But many residents, business owners and immigrant workers have denounced the tactics, saying the agents are indiscriminately sweeping up hard-working friends and neighbors based on racial and ethnic profiling, and are increasingly organizing to push back.
The skirmishes between residents and the heavily armed federal agents have been especially nerve-racking for residents of Minneapolis, where the memories of the 2020 murder of George Floyd — and the protests and rioting that followed — are still raw. This time, residents and elected officials say, the fear is not abuses by law enforcement but an encroaching federal government.
Local concerns over the federal government grew on Tuesday when six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned over the Justice Department’s push to investigate the widow of Ms. Good and questions over whether the shooter would be investigated.
Use the gift link to read more. There are lots of photos too.
Six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned on Tuesday over the Justice Department’s push to investigate the widow of a woman killed by an ICE agent and the department’s reluctance to investigate the shooter, according to people with knowledge of their decision.
Joseph H. Thompson, who was second in command at the U.S. attorney’s office and oversaw a sprawling fraud investigation that has roiled Minnesota’s political landscape, was among those who quit on Tuesday, according to three people with knowledge of the decision.
Joseph H. Thompson
Mr. Thompson’s resignation came after senior Justice Department officials pressed for a criminal investigation into the actions of the widow of Renee Nicole Good, the Minneapolis woman killed by an ICE agent on Wednesday.
Mr. Thompson, 47, a career prosecutor, objected to that approach, as well as to the Justice Department’s refusal to include state officials in investigating whether the shooting itself was lawful, the people familiar with his decision said.
The Minneapolis police chief, Brian O’Hara, said in an interview that Mr. Thompson’s resignation dealt a major blow to efforts to root out rampant theft from state agencies. The fraud cases, which involve schemes to cheat safety net programs, were the chief reason the Trump administration cited for its immigration crackdown in the state. The vast majority of defendants charged in the cases are American citizens of Somali origin.
“When you lose the leader responsible for making the fraud cases, it tells you this isn’t really about prosecuting fraud,” Mr. O’Hara said.
The other senior career prosecutors who resigned include Harry Jacobs, Melinda Williams and Thomas Calhoun-Lopez. Mr. Jacobs had been Mr. Thompson’s deputy overseeing the fraud investigation, which began in 2022. Mr. Calhoun-Lopez was the chief of the violent and major crimes unit.
A bit more:
Tuesday’s resignations followed tumultuous days at the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota as prosecutors there and in Washington struggled to manage the outrage over Ms. Good’s killing, which set off angry protests in Minnesota and across the nation.
After Ms. Good was shot, Harmeet Dhillon, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, told her staff that she would not consider opening an investigation into whether the agent had violated federal law, according to three current and former department officials who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the situation. At least four prosecutors who had already intended to quit or retire signaled they would accelerate their departures, those officials said.
Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, said in a statement that “there is currently no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation” into the ICE agent.
Instead, the Justice Department launched an investigation to examine ties between Ms. Good and her wife, Becca, and several groups that have been monitoring and protesting the conduct of immigration agents in recent weeks. Shortly after Wednesday’s fatal shooting, Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, referred to Ms. Good as a “domestic terrorist.”
A week after37-year old Renée Good was fatally shot by an ICE officer near her Minneapolis home, her partner, parents and four siblings have hired an attorney who represented the family of George Floyd to file a claim against federal officials.
“What happened to Renée is wrong, contrary to established policing practices and procedures, and should never happen in today’s America,” Chicago-based law firm Romanucci & Blandin said in a statement to The Washington Post. The statement said Good’s family wants “to honor her life with progress toward a kinder and more civil America. They do not want her used as a political pawn, but rather as an agent of peace for all.”
One of the firm’s founding partners, Antonio M. Romanucci, a civil rights lawyer, was among those who represented relatives of George Floyd after he was killed in 2020 by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. That legal team’s lawsuit against the city and the four officers involved resulted in a record $27 million settlement for Floyd’s family in 2021, the largest of its kind involving police misconduct.
Good’s shooting, on a residential street where neighbors were monitoring and protesting immigration enforcement activity, has similarly stirred national outrage on the left and the right. Since the fatal encounter on Wednesday, federal officials have sent additional ICE officers to the city, leading to a number of violent encounters publicized on social media and accusations that the operation to detainundocumented immigrants has become more ofan armed occupation.
“It absolutely is escalating considerably over the last week here and it was already quite intense before that,” said State Rep. Mike Howard (D), who represents the suburb of Richfield. “We’ve seen many many examples of an escalating level of violence from federal immigrant officials, in particular targeting citizens, not just immigrants.”
“We’ve seen agents break windows of cars and pull observers out of vehicles, pepper spraying cars and individuals who are literally just exercising their constitutional rights to observe or protest. We had an incident outside of one of our high schools … where chemical irritants were utilized right as school was getting out,” Howard said. “It’s really honestly an hour-by-hour type of incursion, if you will, in a lot of our communities.”
More significant news stories:
Pete Hegseth is trying to crack down on reporters who receive leaks from the DOD.
The FBI raided the home of a Washington Post reporter early Wednesday in what the newspaper called a “highly unusual and aggressive” move by law enforcement, and press freedom groups condemned as a “tremendous intrusion” by the Trump administration.
Agents descended on the Virginia home of Hannah Natanson as part of an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government materials. The Post is “reviewing and monitoring the situation”, a source at the newspaper said.
“It’s a clear and appalling sign that this administration will set no limits on its acts of aggression against an independent press,” Marty Baron, the Post’s former executive editor, told the Guardian.
Pam Bondi, the attorney general, said in a post on X that the raid was conducted by the justice department and FBI at the request of the “department of war”, the Trump administration’s informal name for the department of defense.
Hannah Natanson
The warrant, she said, was executed “at the home of a Washington Post journalist who was obtaining and reporting classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor. The leaker is currently behind bars.”
The statement gave no further details of the raid or investigation. Bondi added: “The Trump administration will not tolerate illegal leaks of classified information that, when reported, pose a grave risk to our nation’s national security and the brave men and women who are serving our country.”
The reporter’s home and devices were searched, and her Garmin watch, phone, and two laptop computers, one belonging to her employer, were seized, the newspaper said. It added that agents told Natanson she was not the focus of the probe, and was not accused of any wrongdoing.
A warrant obtained by the Post cited an investigation into Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a system administrator in Maryland with a top secret security clearance who has been accused of accessing and taking home classified intelligence reports.
Natanson, the Post said, covers the federal workforce and has been a part of the newspaper’s “most high-profile and sensitive coverage” during the first year of the second Trump administration.
Democrats are hoping to flip an Alaska Senate seat.
Former Rep. Mary Peltola raked in $1.5 million in the first 24 hours of her bid to unseat GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan in Alaska, a sizable haul to kick off what will likely be a costly battle for Democrats to flip a Senate seat squarely in Trump terrain.
Peltola’s day-one haul was fueled by small-dollar donors from across Alaska, including fisherman, silversmiths and train conductors, according to information her campaign shared first with POLITICO. Ninety-six percent of those contributions were $100 or less.
“In just 24 hours, Alaskans made it clear that we’re ready to put Alaska first,” Peltola said in a statement. “I’m grateful and honored for this incredible support from people who are ready to take on the special interests and DC people and focus on what matters: fish, family, and freedom.”
Former Rep. Mary Petola
Peltola raised more in one day than the roughly $1.2 million that Sullivan brought in over the third quarter of last year, according to federal campaign finance filings. Sullivan had yet to post his fourth-quarter fundraising report as of Tuesday night, but the Republican was sitting on nearly $4.8 million in cash on hand to start the last three months of the year.
Her total was likely padded by messages from prominent Democrats including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), former Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who blasted out emails Monday asking their supporters to split donations between their political arms and Peltola.
Her campaign said it also recruited more than 500 volunteers in its first day.
Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan says she has learned that federal prosecutors are investigating her after she took part in a video urging military service members to resist illegal orders.
Senator Elissa Slotkin
Ms. Slotkin, a Democrat, said in an interview on Monday that she found out about the inquiry from the office of Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and a longtime ally of President Trump’s. In an email sent to the Senate’s sergeant-at-arms, Ms. Pirro’s office requested an interview with the senator or her private counsel.
A spokesman for Ms. Pirro’s office declined to confirm or deny any investigation, and it is unclear exactly what officials have identified as a possible crime related to the video.
Ms. Slotkin organized the video, which Mr. Trump and other administration officials have described as “seditious,” along with five other Democratic lawmakers who are also military veterans. Its message that military officers are obligated to ignore illegal orders is a fundamental principle of military law.
The investigation by Ms. Pirro’s office is the latest escalation in a campaign by Mr. Trump and his allies to exact retribution on those he views as enemies seeking to undermine his administration or his authority as commander in chief.
Tom Tillis isn’t running for reelection, so now he feels free to criticize Trump.
Sen. Thom Tillis is getting some things off his political chest.
The North Carolina Republican, who decided to oppose President Donald Trump’s massive policy bill last summer and not run for reelection this year, has stepped up his criticism of White House advisers and other Republicans whom he accuses of not serving Trump’s best interests.
Senator Tom Tillis
On Sunday night, Tillis leaped out as the first Republican to bash the Justice Department’s investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell. He declared he won’t support any Fed nominees until the central bank’s long-standing independence is fully restored.
That came after Thursday’s significant symbolic victory in getting unanimous Senate support to display a plaque honoring the police who defended the Capitol during the 2021 insurrection, overriding the efforts of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) to keep the plaque hidden.
And last Wednesday, Tillis delivered a more-than-1,500-word stem-winder on the Senate floor denouncing Trump’s advisers for egging him on with the idea that the U.S. military could take over Greenland.
“I am sick of stupid,” Tillis said.
Early Tuesday afternoon, facing questions about the fallout from the Powell investigation, Tillis said his problems are with the Trump advisers who entertain these positions, not the president himself.
“Who on earth believes that the president could possibly have the depth of expertise to make some of these detailed decisions that he’s making? So, of course, it’s his advisers,” Tillis told a group of reporters in an interview just off the Senate floor.
It would have been nice if he’d spoken up sooner, but better late than never.
Those are my recommended read for today. What stories are you following?
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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.
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.”
Though the race and the job of mayor are nominally nonpartisan, the election generated sizable interest from national Democrats and Republicans. Higgins’ win adds to the slew of victories and close calls Democrats have seen this year, including last week’s strong performance in a House special election in Tennessee.
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.
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
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.”
“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.
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.
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.
“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.”
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.
While President Donald Trump gave himself an “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus” grade on the economy during an exclusive interview with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns, the poll results underscore that voters’ financial anxieties have become deeply intertwined with their politics, shaping how they evaluate the White House’s response to rising costs.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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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.
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…
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
The Trump administration on Tuesday halted immigration applications submitted by nationals from 19 countries that already faced restrictions on travel to the United States, according to a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services memo.
“USCIS has considered that this direction may result in delay to the adjudication of some pending applications and has weighed that consequence against the urgent need for the agency to ensure that applicants are vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible,” the agency said in a four-page policy memo.
“Ultimately, USCIS has determined that the burden of processing delays that will fall on some applicants is necessary and appropriate in this instance, when weighed against the agency’s obligation to protect and preserve national security,” it added.
The New York Times first reported the immigration pause, which applies to both green card and citizenship applicants.
Federal authorities are preparing a targeted immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota that would primarily focus on Somali immigrants living unlawfully in the U.S., according to a person familiar with the planning.
The move comes as President Donald Trump again on Tuesday escalated rhetoric about Minnesota’s sizable Somali community, saying he did not want immigrants from the east African country in the U.S. because “they contribute nothing.”
Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar
The enforcement operation could begin in the coming days and is expected to focus on the Minneapolis–St. Paul area and people with final orders of deportation, the person said. Teams of immigration agents would spread across the Twin Cities in what the person described as a directed, high-priority sweep, though the plans remain subject to change.
The prospect of a crackdown is likely to deepen tensions in Minnesota — home to the nation’s largest Somali community. They’ve been coming since the 1990s, fleeing their country’s long civil war and drawn by Minnesota’s generous social programs.
An estimated 260,000 people of Somalian descent were living in the U.S. in 2024, according to the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey. The largest population is in the Minneapolis area, home to about 84,000 residents, most of whom are American citizens. Ohio, Washington and California also have significant populations.
President Trump unleashed a xenophobic tirade against Somali immigrants on Tuesday, calling them “garbage” he does not want in the United States in an outburst that captured the raw nativism that has animated his approach to immigration.
Even for Mr. Trump — who has a long history of insulting Black people, particularly those from African countries — his outburst was shocking in its unapologetic bigotry. And it comes as he started a new ICE operation targeting Somalis in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region.
“These are people that do nothing but complain,” Mr. Trump said at the tail end of a cabinet meeting at the White House, during which he sometimes appeared to be fighting sleep. But when the subject turned to immigration, Mr. Trump made a point of lashing out.
“When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it,” Mr. Trump added as Vice President JD Vance banged the table in encouragement.
He said Somalia “stinks and we don’t want them in our country.” He described Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, who came to the United States from Somalia as a refugee and became a citizen 25 years ago, as “garbage.”
“We could go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country,” Mr. Trump said. “She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people who work. These aren’t people who say, ‘Let’s go, come on, let’s make this place great.’”
Mr. Trump has used this kind of rhetoric throughout his rise in politics, including in his first term as president, when he demanded to know why the United States would accept immigrants from Haiti and African nations, which he described as “shithole countries,” rather than, say, Norway.
But he has long been especially fixated on Somalis in the United States, and on Ms. Omar in particular.
“His obsession with me is creepy,” Ms. Omar wrote in a post shortly after the cabinet meeting. “I hope he gets the help he desperately needs.”
Trump is garbage and he should be in prison.
Those are my recommended reads for you today. What’s on your mind?
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
Shalom Baranes Associates, the firm handling the project, shared the renderings with the National Capital Planning Commission, a committee charged by Congress with overseeing major federal construction projects in the region. The renderings include various angles of the ballroom building, an approximately 90,000-square-foot addition that would also include offices for White House staff. The White House has dubbed the project its “East Wing Modernization.”
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