‘The Order Was to Kill Everybody’: A Savage Incident at Sea

Posted on December 1, 2025December 1, 2025 by David Kurtz

The Implications Are Vast and Serious

The explosive holiday story from the WaPo — that on orders from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the U.S. military deliberately killed survivors of one of the Trump administration’s lawless high seas attacks on alleged drug smugglers — may have finally stirred Republicans in Congress to at least pantomime as Article I legislators.

From a legal standpoint, it’s important to reiterate the baseline: There is no basis in law for the maritime attacks. Period. Full stop.

The Trump administration has come up with a pretextual justification for the campaign of attacks that remains mostly secret, but what has been reported shows it to be weak, unconvincing, ahistorical, and self-justifying.

While the scene depicted in the WaPo report is grim and disturbing, the primary legal significance of the Sept. 2 incident is that it would be a violation of the laws of war even under the administration’s own self-justifying description of its campaign as an armed conflict with “narcoterrorists.”

Hegseth’s reported order “to kill everybody” was issued before the SEAL Team 6 attack, and the survivors were killed when a Special Operations commander ordered a second strike on the disabled vessel, according to the WaPo report.

In a remarkable rhetorical retreat — at least for now — President Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One last evening that he would not have wanted the second strike: “I wouldn’t have wanted that. Not a second strike. The first strike was very lethal. It was fine.”

Trump also said he had “great confidence” Hegseth did not give a spoken order to kill all crew members aboard the vessel, saying that Hegseth told him “he did not say that, and I believe him, 100%.”

In short, the president and defense secretary are denying that they’re responsible for the kill order as described by the WaPo. Assuming the WaPo story to be accurate, the implication of their position is that service members on the ground exceeded their orders or otherwise failed to follow the rules of engagement. The fact that that’s the best the White House and Pentagon can come up with at this stage of the unfolding scandal is a good indicator of how bad the actual facts are.

In a significant move that it is wildly out of character so far this term, key Hill Republicans gave public, on-the-record voice to their concerns about the WaPo story. “Obviously if that occurred, that would be very serious, and I agree that would be an illegal act,” former House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Turner (R-OH) told CBS News.

The armed services committees in both chambers launched bipartisan investigations into the reported attack.

When we adjourned for the Thanksgiving holiday, the Trump White House and the Pentagon were leading a retaliatory campaign against Hill Democrats — accusing them of treason and raising the prospect of executing them — for posting a video urging service members to do their duty and abide by the law by refusing to follow illegal orders. By the time we returned from the holiday, the script had completely flipped, and Hill Republicans were struggling to defend the administration’s lawless conduct in the strikes.

In Other Venezuela News …

In most cases, the Trump administration does not know the identities of the more than 80 people killed in its high sea strikes on allege drug-smuggling boats, the NYT reports.
In a social media post Saturday, President Trump unilaterally declared that Venezuelan airspace should be considered closed: “To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.”
President Trump spoke by phone with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro the week before last.

Boasberg Wants Noem on the Record

In the contempt of court inquiry in the original Alien Enemies Act case, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg set a Dec. 5 deadline for the Trump administration to submit declarations “from all individuals involved in the decision not to halt the transfer of class members out of U.S. physical custody on March 15 and 16, 2025.”

In ordering the declarations, Boasberg highlighted the administration’s filing earlier in the week claiming to identify the most senior official involved in defying Boasberg’s order to halt the AEA deportations of Venezuelan nationals: “The Government, now for the first time, has identified who purportedly made the decision not to recall planes containing Alien Enemies Act detainees on March 15, 2025: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.”

Note Boasberg’s use of “purportedly.”

As Morning Memo observed last week: “The AEA deportations were one of the White House’s first major moves in its mass deportation scheme, the signature initiative of President Trump’s second term. But we’re supposed to believe that the buck stopped with … Kristi Noem.”

Must Read

Sarah Stillman investigates the Trump administration’s brutal third country removals:

One Saturday morning in early September, I got a WhatsApp video call from eleven strangers locked inside a secretive detention camp in a forest in Ghana. Their faces looked glazed with sweat and stricken with fear. In the background, I could hear birdsong and the drone of insects. An armed guard watched over the group as they huddled around a shared cellphone.

Trump Lashes Out After Guardsmen Shot

President Trump reacted to the brutal shooting death in D.C. of one member of the West Virginia National Guard and the wounding of another by an Afghan refugee with a predictable scorched earth attack on migrants of color:

Trump vowed to halt migration from “third world countries.”
The Trump administration paused all asylum applications and stopped issuing visas to people from Afghanistan.
Trump targeted the Somali immigrant community in Minnesota for an especially virulent social media post.

For the Record …

Fani Willis’ self-appointed replacement as prosecutor of the sprawling Georgia RICO case against Donald Trump and others for their role in trying to subvert the state’s 2020 election dropped the case, and the judge dismissed it.

Tina Peters to Remain in Colorado Custody

Under pressure from the Trump administration, Colorado has declined to transfer convicted former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters to federal custody. Peters has become a darling of U.S. pardon attorney Ed Martin and the MAGA right after her conviction for tampering with voting machines to try to prove the 2020 Big Lie.

11th Circuit Upholds Sanctions Against Trump

A unanimous three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a $1 million sanction against President Trump and attorney Alina Habba for filing a frivolous lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey.

The Scale of Trump’s Retribution

In the most comprehensive accounting yet of Trump’s campaign of payback, Reuters finds: “At least 470 people, organizations and institutions have been targeted for retribution since Trump took office – an average of more than one a day. Some were singled out for punishment; others swept up in broader purges of perceived enemies.”
In conscripting the Pentagon for use in Trump’s retribution campaign, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has crossed a dangerous line that could lead to the politicization of the military. “The best way to stop a politicization death spiral is to never start it,” Peter Feaver, who studies civil-military relations at Duke University, told the WaPo.

The Corruption: Pardon Edition

President Trump said he plans to pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who is serving a 45-year sentence after he was convicted last year of helping drug cartels ship hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States in exchange for millions of dollars in bribes.
President Trump commuted the sentence of private equity executive David Gentile, who had served just two weeks of a seven-year sentence for his role in a $1.6 billion fraud scheme.

The Destruction: Higher Ed Edition

In another major capitulation, Northwestern University reached a $75 million deal with the Trump administrations to restore frozen federal research funding.

Quote of the Day, Part I

New Yorker writer Dhruv Khullar, a physician:

A reason that the U.S. became the world’s biomedical leader—indeed, a reason that it emerged from the Cold War victorious—is that democratic governance allows for a level of self-correction that authoritarianism does not. Bad ideas can be beaten back at the ballot box, in the public square, and through the halls of Congress. The country is under no obligation to tolerate institutionalized quackery or elected officials who, through feckless appeals and half measures, have become complicit in it. Truly making America healthy will involve more than removing an asterisk. It will require turning the page.

Quote of the Day, Part II

Paul Offit, a pediatrician and the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, on how to restore civic trust in science: “I don’t think there is any way to regain that trust other than have the viruses do the education, and the bacteria do the education, and then people will realize they paid way too high a cost.”

Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.

Texas’ New Abortion Ban Aims to Stop Doctors From Sending Abortion Pills to the State

Posted on December 1, 2025December 1, 2025 by Allegra Kirkland

This story was originally reported by Shefali Luthra of The 19th. Meet Shefali and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

Texas’ massive new abortion law taking effect this week could escalate the national fight over mailing abortion pills.

House Bill 7 represents abortion opponents’ most ambitious effort to halt telehealth abortions, which have helped patients get around strict bans in Texas and other states after Roe v. Wade was overturned. The law, which goes into effect December 4, creates civil penalties for health care providers who make abortion medications available in Texas, allowing any private citizen to sue medical providers for a minimum penalty of $100,000. The bill’s backers have said it would also allow suits against drug manufacturers. It would not enable suits against the people who get abortions.

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Trump’s Immigration Forces Are Recklessly Deploying ‘Less Lethal’ Weapons. Protesters Are Getting Maimed.

Posted on December 1, 2025November 25, 2025 by Allegra Kirkland

This story is part of a collaboration between FRONTLINE and ProPublica that includes an upcoming documentary.

As the Trump administration’s immigration dragnet intensified in June, a nurse in Portland, Oregon, left work one midafternoon and drove to a nearby detention facility to voice his opposition. Federal agents had set off smoke grenades, driving away many protesters at the front of the facility, but Vincent Hawkins lifted his megaphone anyway.

“You should stop and think about what you’re doing!”

The shot came seconds later, a silver projectile launched through the small facility’s closed gate, hitting him in the face. The tear gas canister shattered his glasses, ripped apart his brow, crushed against his eye and concussed him. In video footage, the projectile can be seen bouncing off his face and arcing back toward the unknown Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who fired it.

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AI, ‘Populism’ and the Centibillionaire Shangri-La

Posted on November 28, 2025November 28, 2025 by Josh Marshall

A few days ago, I was looking at one of the many recent (post-shutdown) polls that show an increasingly dark mood toward the GOP and favorable signs for the Democrats. There was something else in those polls that surprised me: people are really, really down on AI. Now, to be clear, this is sort of cardinal assumption almost bordering on a prejudice in the world I live in: a fairly educated, generally left-leaning world. Everyone’s down on AI in various ways in that world and for many good reasons, even as many also incorporate AI into aspects of their professional lives. (This is a pervasive dichotomy: we’re generally AI skeptic; AI is also allowing our programmers to be vastly more productive.) What struck me though is how widespread the skepticism or hostility is. It goes across demographics and age, political persuasions.

There are many good reasons for this. The explosion of investment in AI poses various near and long term environmental dangers; it might … well, take your job away from you (downer); it’s driving up prices for energy, ubiquitous parts of the modern economy like computer memory; and … oh, there’s that one thing that even the biggest champions of AI talk about and are oddly fascinated by … the non-trivial chance that AI could lead to the extermination of the human race (bummer!). This is the list of horribles that leaves many us thinking what in the actual fuck are we doing here?

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The NLRB Is Suing to Keep States From Protecting Workers’ Rights

Posted on November 28, 2025November 28, 2025 by Allegra Kirkland

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.

For nine decades, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has stood as the federal government’s primary guardian of workers’ rights to organize and bargain collectively. Created in the depths of the Great Depression, the NLRB was designed to be a buffer between workers and the concentrated economic power of employers, ensuring that the fundamental right to unionize could not be crushed by intimidation or retaliation. Its enabling legislation, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), is unambiguous in its purpose: to encourage and protect collective bargaining and to level the playing field between employers and employees.

And yet, in one of the most striking ironies of recent years, under the Trump administration, the NLRB itself is suing states like California and New York that have asserted the right to protect their workers when the NLRB fails to do its job.

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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Long a Defender of States’ Rights, Embraces Trump’s Push to Expand Presidential Power

Posted on November 28, 2025November 28, 2025 by Allegra Kirkland

This article was originally co-published by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

Just last year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott joined a bipartisan chorus of governors in denouncing a Biden administration plan they said would strip states of powers guaranteed to them under federal law.

The plan would have transferred Air National Guard units from six states to the U.S. Space Force, the newly created military branch, stoking concerns about federal overreach and the erosion of governors’ control over their own guard forces. Texas wasn’t among the affected states, but Abbott made his opposition unmistakable in an open letter to the president.

He called the plan an “intolerable threat that would set a “dangerous precedent.”

“I strongly oppose any attempt to sideline governors when it comes to their respective National Guards,” he wrote.

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Five Points on the Gradually-Emerging Picture of the Post Shutdown U.S. Economy

Posted on November 28, 2025November 29, 2025 by Layla A. Jones

Maybe President Donald Trump is calling his economy “The Golden Age” because it’s expensive.

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Two of Trump’s Second Term Agenda Items See Grim Convergence in Missouri

Posted on November 28, 2025November 26, 2025 by Khaya Himmelman

Hello, it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️

An anti-gerrymandering activist group in Missouri, People Not Politicians, is facing a barrage of threats from the state’s Republican Attorney General Catherine Hanaway. Hanaway recently launched an investigation into the group after baselessly claiming that they are gathering signatures for an anti-gerrymandering referendum from “illegal aliens.”

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Comment

Posted on November 27, 2025November 28, 2025 by Josh Marshall

No one should lose sight of the fact that the National Guard was only in Washington, D.C. as part of an extended political messaging stunt. They are there because of a legal lacunae created by the district’s non-statehood and consequent lack of democratic sovereignty. The shooter (the man in custody is suspected of, but not proven to be, that person) is guilty of the attack and the carnage surrounding it. Donald Trump is responsible for them. This episode is the collateral damage of, downstream of, Trump abusing his powers as president.

Hegseth Orders 500 More Troops to DC in Wake of National Guard Shooting

Posted on November 26, 2025November 26, 2025 by Nicole LaFond

A Nation on Edge

The White House was on lockdown earlier today after a shooting in downtown Washington, D.C., just two blocks northwest of the White House.

We are still learning new information, and this is a breaking news story as of Wednesday afternoon, but it appears as though two National Guard service members were shot and critically injured, according to FBI Director Kash Patel. President Trump was not at the White House at the time of the shooting. Both the service members and a suspect were transported to the hospital, according to the public information officer for D.C. Fire and Emergency Services. Police have confirmed that they have the suspected shooter in custody and Patel said during a press conference on Wednesday that the suspect would be charged with assault on a federal officer.

The extent of the soldiers’ injuries are not yet clear. Patel confirmed at the press conference that they were alive but in critical condition. The Associated Press reported that at least one of the troops exchanged fire with the shooter. West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey initially reported via social media that the National Guard members had both been killed, before, minutes later, retracting that statement.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth responded to news of the shooting by requesting additional National Guard troops be sent to D.C.

“President Trump has asked me and I will ask the Secretary of the Army to the National Guard to add 500 additional troops — National Guardsman — to Washington, D.C.,” Hegseth said. “This will only stiffen our resolve to make sure we make Washington D.C. safe and beautiful.”

Trump, who is in Florida for Thanksgiving, vowed to ensure that the shooter — whom he called an “animal” — “will pay a very steep price.”

“God bless our Great National Guard, and all of our Military and Law Enforcement. These are truly Great People,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “I, as President of the United States, and everyone associated with the Office of the Presidency, am with you!”

The National Guard troops were in Washington, D.C. as part of Trump’s nationwide deployment to mostly blue U.S. cities as part of a performative crackdown on supposedly rampant crime and to help curb protests against his violent and inhumane mass deportation effort. A judge recently found the deployment to be illegal, a determination that will likely ultimately reach the Supreme Court.

Obviously, moments like these put an already tense nation further on edge due to the increasingly fraught environment we live in, where political violence has become more routine, even over the course of the past year. Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota were killed this summer. Charlie Kirk was assassinated during a Turning Point USA event in Utah. Trump’s endured two failed assassination attempts in the past few years. Trump himself stoked historically unprecedented political violence when a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol in 2021.

While the Trump administration claims the troops have been deployed to make American cities safer and to protect Trump’s immigration interests, the use of the military against U.S. civilians protesting ICE’s presence is itself unprecedented and, in many cases, has helped further stoke violence and unrest, rather than prevent it.

— Nicole LaFond

Trump Won’t Be Held Accountable for Georgia Election Interference

On Wednesday, a Georgia judge dropped the years-long election interference case against President Trump, related to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Trump and 18 others were charged with racketeering back in August of 2023 by District Attorney for Fulton County Fani Willis.

The charges were brought after a phone call Trump had with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger came to light in 2021. During that phone call, in addition to peddling countless falsehoods about the 2020 election, he asked Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia — a state Joe Biden won by close to 12,000 votes.

“In my professional judgment, the citizens of Georgia are not served by pursuing this case in full for another five to ten years,” prosecutor Peter Skandalakis, the prosecutor who took over the case, wrote in a court filing on Wednesday.

Shortly thereafter, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee officially dismissed the case.

— Khaya Himmelman

Trump Writes Off ACA Extension

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump told reporters he does not want to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year.

“I’d rather not. Somebody said I want to extend them for two years. I don’t want to extend them for two years. I’d rather not extend them at all,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One Tuesday.

The president’s dismissal of an extension to the subsidies — which congressional Democrats have been trying to force their Republican colleagues to do for several months — came just days after the White House postponed the release of a Trump health care plan that reportedly would extend the ACA subsidies for two years with adjustments to the eligibility requirements, including new income limits.

The plan, which was reportedly circulated by the Trump White House, was supposed to be released on Monday but was delayed. The White House did not give a reason for the delay but it came amid reports of pushback from congressional Republicans who would like to see the subsidies end.

If the subsidies expire, premiums are expected to significantly increase for millions who rely on the program. And an estimated two million more people are expected to become uninsured next year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

— Emine Yücel