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Killing shipwrecked survivors isn’t just illegal — it endangers U.S. servicemembers

Killing shipwrecked survivors isn’t just illegal — it endangers U.S. servicemembers

Mark Nevitt writes: According to recent media reports, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth verbally ordered special forces to “kill everybody” ahead of a Sept. 2 operation targeting alleged drug traffickers in international waters. That order allegedly resulted in a follow-on “double tap” strike that killed two survivors who were clinging to wreckage. I agree with Professor Jack Goldsmith that if the media reporting is accurate, this military operation is a “dishonorable strike” that is illegal under international law and the laws…

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Family of Colombian fisherman killed in U.S. boat strike files complaint alleging he was murdered

Family of Colombian fisherman killed in U.S. boat strike files complaint alleging he was murdered

ABC News reports: The family of a Colombian fisherman who died in a U.S. military boat strike in September has filed a formal complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights alleging the U.S. government illegally killed him. Alejandro Carranza was killed in a strike in the Caribbean on Sept. 15, according to the petition, filed on Tuesday. “From numerous news reports, we know that U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was responsible for ordering the bombing of boats like…

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Pentagon watchdog report: Hegseth risked endangering troops with Signal messages

Pentagon watchdog report: Hegseth risked endangering troops with Signal messages

The Atlantic reports: For nearly nine months, Trump-administration officials have defended top national-security leaders who shared information in a Signal chat about U.S. strikes in Yemen, first reported by The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, who was inadvertently included in the group. Officials played down the severity of the breach and insisted that the information wasn’t classified. Now the Pentagon’s top watchdog has concluded that the information Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared in the chat could have put the…

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FBI headquarters seeks ‘seditious conspiracy’ probe of Democratic lawmakers

FBI headquarters seeks ‘seditious conspiracy’ probe of Democratic lawmakers

Bloomberg Law reports: FBI headquarters is pressuring the bureau’s domestic terrorism agents to open a seditious conspiracy investigation into six Democratic lawmakers who advised military service members to defy unlawful orders, according to three people familiar with the situation. Such an investigation, which has not yet been opened, would mark a more serious step than the FBI’s voluntary inquiry that several of the Democrats derided last week and would escalate the administration’s use of law enforcement to probe the president’s…

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Speaker Johnson faces a growing rebellion

Speaker Johnson faces a growing rebellion

The New York Times reports: Representative Elise Stefanik of New York called Speaker Mike Johnson a habitual liar. Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina has told people she is so frustrated with the Louisiana Republican and sick of the way he has run the House — particularly how women are treated there — that she is planning to huddle with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia next week to discuss following her lead and retiring early from Congress. Representative Anna…

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Does the Heritage Foundation support discrimination against women?

Does the Heritage Foundation support discrimination against women?

Henry Olsen writes: The Heritage Foundation has had a tough month. President Kevin Roberts’s decision to vigorously defend Tucker Carlson’s platforming of the noted anti-Semite and white nationalist Nick Fuentes has pushed the conservative think tank into a tailspin. One board member, the Princeton professor Robert George, resigned; a number of staff departed; and a task force to combat anti-Semitism severed its ties. Yet Heritage’s problems are hardly limited to its handling of Fuentes. The think tank’s recent decision to…

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Roger Stone, Trump, the libertarian fantasy of Próspera, and the release of a convicted drug lord

Roger Stone, Trump, the libertarian fantasy of Próspera, and the release of a convicted drug lord

Reuters reports: President Donald Trump, who has cast himself as a relentless foe of illegal drugs, pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, freeing him from a 45-year sentence for conspiring to import tons of cocaine into the United States. Trump’s extraordinary move undermines decades of U.S. efforts to combat transnational drug networks, potentially damages Washington’s credibility in Latin America, and signals to corrupt actors that political connections can outweigh criminal accountability. Trump signed the pardon for Hernandez on Monday…

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Trump denigrates Somali immigrants as he orders ICE to target them. Local officials push back

Trump denigrates Somali immigrants as he orders ICE to target them. Local officials push back

The New Republic reports: Donald Trump is openly threatening Minnesota’s Somali American community and making racist attacks against them. After the president’s Cabinet meeting Tuesday, Trump told reporters that he heard “Somalians ripped off that state for billions of dollars. Billions. Every year, billions of dollars. And they contribute nothing. The welfare’s like 88 percent. They contribute nothing. I don’t want ’em in our country, I’ll be honest with you. Somebody would say, ‘Ooh, that’s not politically correct.’ I don’t…

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Entire chain of command could be held liable for killing boat strike survivors, say sources

Entire chain of command could be held liable for killing boat strike survivors, say sources

The Intercept reports: Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is under increasing fire for a double-tap strike, first reported by The Intercept in early September, in which the U.S. military killed two survivors of the Trump administration’s initial boat strike in the Caribbean on September 2. The Washington Post recently reported that Hegseth personally ordered the follow-up attack, giving a spoken order “to kill everybody.” Multiple military legal experts, lawmakers, and now confidential sources within the government who spoke with The…

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DOGE has ‘burrowed into the agencies like ticks’

DOGE has ‘burrowed into the agencies like ticks’

Wired reports: To one member of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the last few months have been “crazy.” In a slideshow of photos and videos posted to Instagram last month, Yat Choi—who joined DOGE this spring—posted clips of Trump administration officials dancing on the White House lawn to“Y.M.C.A”; people loading into what appears to be a private jet; and house parties decorated with American flags and attendees donning red, white, and blue hats holding red Solo cups and…

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How Israel entrenched apartheid rule during Gaza war

How Israel entrenched apartheid rule during Gaza war

+972 reports: For over two years, Israeli public life has been shrouded in a heavy, disorienting fog. There has been an unending churn of crises, conflicts, and anxieties at home and abroad: the shock of the Hamas attack of October 7 and Israel’s genocidal campaign of revenge on Gaza, the fight to bring back the hostages and against the state’s vilification of their families, the reckless confrontations with Iran. Together, these have left Israeli society suspended in a collective stupor,…

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How to build a new global order that rebalances power through cooperation rather than competition

How to build a new global order that rebalances power through cooperation rather than competition

Alexander Studd, President of Finland, writes: The world has changed more in the past four years than in the previous 30. Our news feeds brim with strife and tragedy. Russia bombards Ukraine, the Middle East seethes, and wars rage in Africa. As conflicts are on the rise, democracies, it seems, are in demise. The post–Cold War era is over. Despite the hopes that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall, the globe did not unite in embracing democracy and market…

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‘This is murder’: Hegseth could face prosecution for alleged order to ‘kill everyone’ on boat in Caribbean

‘This is murder’: Hegseth could face prosecution for alleged order to ‘kill everyone’ on boat in Caribbean

Time reports: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth could face criminal liability for a strike on a boat in the Caribbean in September, legal experts have told TIME, as lawmakers announced a rare bipartisan investigation of the incident in which 11 people were allegedly killed in two separate strikes. The September 2 strikes, among the first in the Trump Administration’s months-long bombing campaign against what it claims are drug-trafficking boats operating in the Caribbean, were carried out by SEAL Team 6 at…

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Trump’s pardon of Honduras’s ex-president shows counter-drug effort is ‘based on lies and hypocrisy’

Trump’s pardon of Honduras’s ex-president shows counter-drug effort is ‘based on lies and hypocrisy’

Tom Phillips writes: He was a Latin American president accused of colluding with some of the region’s most ruthless narco bosses to flood the United States with cocaine. “[Let’s] stuff the drugs right up the noses of the gringos,” the double-dealing politician once allegedly bragged as he lined his pockets with millions of dollars in bribes and turned his country into what many called a narco-state. The description might sound like a sketch of Venezuela’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, who…

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FBI is a ‘rudderless ship’ under Kash Patel — he and Bongino are focused on social media, report says

FBI is a ‘rudderless ship’ under Kash Patel — he and Bongino are focused on social media, report says

The New York Post reports: FBI Director Kash Patel is facing withering criticism from an alliance of active-duty and retired agents and analysts, days after the White House denied media reports that the president is about to fire him. A troubling new report card on the first six months of Patel’s leadership concludes he is “in over his head” and his deputy, Dan Bongino, is “something of a clown,” according to the alliance, which in two previous reports warned about…

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Flock uses overseas gig workers to build its surveillance AI

Flock uses overseas gig workers to build its surveillance AI

Wired and 404 Media report: Flock, the automatic license plate reader and AI-powered camera company, uses overseas workers from Upwork to train its machine learning algorithms, with training material telling workers how to review and categorize footage including images people and vehicles in the United States, according to material reviewed by 404 Media that was accidentally exposed by the company. The findings bring up questions about who exactly has access to footage collected by Flock surveillance cameras and where people…

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