The implications are vast and serious
WaPo’s explosive holiday story — that, at the behest of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the U.S. military deliberately killed survivors of one of the Trump administration’s lawless high-seas raids on suspected drug traffickers — may have finally roused congressional Republicans to at least pantomime Article I lawmakers.
From a legal point of view, it is important to reiterate the bottom line: there is no legal basis for maritime attacks. Period. Point.
The Trump administration has come up with a pretextual justification for the attack campaign that remains largely secret, but what has been reported shows it to be weak, unconvincing, ahistorical and self-righteous.
While the scene described 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 description of its campaign as an armed conflict with “narco-terrorists.”
Hegseth’s reported order to “kill everyone” came before the SEAL Team 6 attack, and the survivors were killed when a special operations commander ordered a second strike on the disabled ship, according to the WaPo report.
In a remarkable rhetorical retreat – at least for now – President Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One last night that he would not have wanted a second strike: “I wouldn’t have wanted that. Not a second strike. The first strike was very lethal. It was good.”
Trump also said he had “a lot of confidence” that Hegseth did not give a spoken order to kill all the crew aboard the ship, saying Hegseth told him “he didn’t say that and I believe him 100 percent.”
In short, the president and defense secretary deny they are responsible for the kill order as described by WaPo. Assuming the WaPo story is accurate, the implication of their position is that service members on the ground exceeded their orders or otherwise disobeyed the rules of engagement. The fact that this is the best the White House and the Pentagon can come up with at this stage of the unfolding scandal is a good indicator of how bad the real facts are.
In a significant move that is largely unchanged so far this term, key Republicans on the Hill have apparently publicly voiced their concerns about the WaPo story. “Obviously if that were to happen, it would be very serious and I agree that it would be an illegal act,” former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) told CBS News.
The armed services committees of both houses have launched bipartisan investigations into the reported attack.
As we adjourned for Thanksgiving, the Trump White House and the Pentagon were waging a campaign of revenge against the 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 obey the law by refusing to follow illegal orders. By the time we returned from vacation, the scenario had completely changed, and Republicans on the Hill were scrambling to defend the administration’s lawless conduct on strike.
In other news from Venezuela…
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In most cases, the Trump administration does not know the identities of the more than 80 people killed in its high seas strikes on suspected drug-trafficking boats, the NYT reports.
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In a social media post on Saturday, President Trump unilaterally declared that Venezuelan airspace should be considered closed: “To all airlines, pilots, drug traffickers and human traffickers, please consider the AIRSPACE OVER AND AROUND VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.”
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President Trump spoke on the phone with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro the week before.
Boasberg wants Noem on the record
In the contempt of court hearing in the original Alien Enemies Act case, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg set a Dec. 5 deadline for the Trump administration to file statements “from all individuals involved in the decision not to stop the transfer of class members from U.S. physical custody on March 15 and 16, 2025.”
In ordering statements, Boasberg highlighted the administration’s record earlier in the week, claiming to have identified the most senior official involved in defying Boasberg’s order to halt AEA deportations of Venezuelan citizens: “The government has now, for the first time, identified who allegedly made the decision not to recall the planes that contained the Alien Enemies Act 2025, the Secretary of Homeland Security. Nov.”
Note that Boasberg uses the word “alleged”.
As the Morning Memo observed last week: “The AEA deportations were one of the first major moves by the White House in its mass deportation scheme, the signature initiative of President Trump’s second term. But we’re supposed to think the buck stopped with … Kristi Noem.”
Must read
Sarah Stillman investigates the Trump administration’s brutal removals from third countries:
One Saturday morning in early September, I received a WhatsApp video call from eleven foreigners locked in a secret detention camp in a forest in Ghana. Their faces looked shiny with sweat and gripped with fear. In the background, I could hear birdsong and the buzzing of insects. An armed guard watched over the group as they huddled around a shared cell phone.
Trump strikes after security guards shot
President Trump reacted to the brutal shooting death in DC of a West Virginia National Guardsman and the wounding of another by an Afghan refugee with a predictable scorched-earth attack on black migrants:
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Trump has promised to stop migration from “third world countries”.
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The Trump administration has suspended all asylum applications and stopped issuing visas to people from Afghanistan.
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Trump targeted Minnesota’s Somali immigrant community for a particularly virulent social media post.
For the record…
Fani Willis’ self-appointed replacement as prosecutor in the sprawling Georgia RICO suit against Donald Trump and others for their role in trying to undermine the state’s 2020 election has dropped the case and the judge has dismissed it.
Tina Peters will remain in custody in Colorado
Under pressure from the Trump administration, Colorado has refused to transfer former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters to federal custody. Peters became the darling of US Pardon Attorney Ed Martin and MAGA right after her conviction for tampering with voting machines to try to prove the Big Lie of 2020.
11th Circuit upholds sanctions against Trump
A unanimous three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a $1 million penalty 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 revenge
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In the most comprehensive accounting yet of Trump’s redemption campaign, Reuters notes: “At least 470 people, organizations and institutions have been targeted for retaliation since Trump took office — an average of more than one a day. Some were singled out for punishment; others were swept up in broader purges of perceived enemies.”
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In recruiting the Pentagon for use in Trump’s revenge campaign, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth crossed a dangerous line that could lead to the politicization of the military. “The best way to stop a politicized death spiral is to never start it,” Peter Feaver, who studies civil-military relations at Duke University, told WaPo.
Corruption Edition: Pardon
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President Trump has said he plans to pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who is serving a 45-year sentence after being convicted last year of helping drug cartels deliver hundreds of tons of cocaine to the United States in exchange for millions of dollars in bribes.
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President Trump commuted the sentence of private equity executive David Gentile, who 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 has reached a $75 million deal with the Trump administration to restore frozen federal funding for research.
Quote of the day, part I
New York writer Dhruv Khullar, MD:
One reason the US has become the world’s biomedical leader—indeed, one reason it emerged victorious from the Cold War—is that democratic governance allows for a level of self-correction that authoritarianism does not. Bad ideas can be defeated at the ballot box, in the public square, and through the halls of Congress. The country has no obligation to tolerate institutionalized quackery or elected officials who, through reckless appeals and half-measures, have become complicit in it. Making America truly healthy will involve more than removing an asterisk. It will require a page turn.
Quote of the day, part II
Paul Offit, a pediatrician and 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’s any way to regain that trust other than viruses do the education and bacteria do the education, and then people will realize they’ve paid far too high a price.”
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